


stiriaca sire

by 0plus2equals1



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Multi, Other, explicit content marked by chapter, gender neutral hunter - Freeform, heyday cainhurst... Or Is It, technically a soulstober prompt fill but it has Evolved, weirdly flirtatious yet ominous interactions with that rotted vileblood royalty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26832340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0plus2equals1/pseuds/0plus2equals1
Summary: The hunter receives a very different invitation to a very different Cainhurst— but to what ends?
Relationships: Annalise the Queen of the Vilebloods/The Hunter (Bloodborne), Bloody Crow Of Cainhurst/The Hunter
Comments: 96
Kudos: 96





	1. Chapter 1

It was easy enough to flit unseen across slanted slates, taking leaping strides from eave to eave. Darkness had not yet fallen but the oil gloss of black feathers caught no eyes from such a high perch. There was the risk of disturbing the rooftop birds and alerting all around by the resulting loud and indignant squawking, but the fluttering coat disguised the interloper by scent and allowed passage with nary a peep from the crows. 

The figure ascended further. There was a smell here, acrid with an electric sting, and there was also far more danger of being seen; the night was young and the various officials of the Church could still be at work outdoors. Thankfully, the upper ward seemed empty, with its narrow paths scrubbed out in harsh yellows and oranges by the setting sun. As the figure approached a vast window near a pale garden, there was a peripheral glimpse of something blue, blobby— and better left alone. That sort of blood held no promise.

With additional exploration, a more subtle entrance to the cathedral was found. There was no crash of broken glass to alert those taking solace within. The paper-thin armor glided at the joints and was light enough not to clank as the figure approached the edge of the balcony. A keenly observant gaze traveled down the apse; a headless woman poured a jar of the divine over enthroned ostentation and statuary supplication. At the bottom of the display rested a beastly skull on top of folded bloody rags. A few paces away, crouched in reverence and repeating a whispered mantra, was a woman. Her robes were dingy and stained but the cut of the fabric stirred recognition— she must be the Vicar.

What an auspicious beginning to the night! There wasn’t a better body around to gut and claim bounty from. It would be easy enough to approach silently from this vantage point—a good length of rope was stowed carefully beneath the skirt plate, used mostly for these high-altitude endeavors— and then the Vicar could be searched for dregs. The Church had always been more decadent than they cared to let on, indulgent in ways invisible to their own insight— 

When it came to Cainhurst, how could they possibly pass judgement?

The sword at the Bloody Crow’s side ached for blood.

The quiet echo of the prayer below shifted in tone. The Vicar’s breathing grew harsh and ragged. The hood of the robe reared back.

The Bloody Crow was not one oft taken aback, but where a woman had once been there was now a rupture. A gout of blood spurted far enough to mar the highest marble of the altar. A long line of sharp and messily interlocked teeth lifted. The mouth fell open, panting. One clutched hand lifted to the beast’s chest as if still in prayer.

It was both a disappointment and a delight to see that the Church had festered so completely. What was once the Vicar turned on her haunches. Her own robes were ensnared on twisting antlers and draped loosely across her eyes. She had been embraced by beasthood and thus was of no more use to the errant Crow’s cause.

The narrow snout lifted. Two obscured gazes locked together. The Crow had been impeccably silent, but the beast could likely sense the feather-coat scent. If she would throw herself into the motion, her claws would easily be able to reach up and sweep across the high balcony.

The Vicar rose up and bristled with a low, bone-chilling growl.

A retreat would be wise. To leap down and plunge a blade directly into the Vicar’s skull would be satisfying.

The Crow had the chance to do neither; the beast’s attention was drawn by a serrated blade cutting at her side. The vast interior of the cathedral resounded with a guttural shrieking. Claws sparked against the stone floor in a wide arc but a hunter dashed through them and struck at her forearm.

So there was worthy prey within the husk of the Healing Church yet. The Crow set armored elbows against the balustrade and observed. This new body could be investigated if the Vicar didn’t mash it to a pulp first. The hunter ducked beneath thrashing limbs as the Vicar sent her fists crashing into stone. The blade snapped open and elongated before carving a deep red streak into white fur.

The Crow’s silver helm tilted. Beyond the iron richness of blood, beyond the incendiary snap and smoke of gunpowder, beyond the warning stench of beasthood— there was another smell, subtle but insistent like a fine perfume. 

The Crow noticed that the light beaming in from the uppermost windows had gone from the smoldering hues of the long sunset to the sudden paleness of the moon.

The little war below continued. The Vicar retreated to a far corner of the cathedral and clasped her claws together. There was some remnant blessing at work as her torn flesh struggled back together under a golden, ethereal glow. It was a miracle that she could focus upon its use in her state— and an annoyance, the Crow judged: just a way to fleetingly put off the inevitable with this strangely scented hunter.

Leave it to the tireless figure below to out-bite a beast. The Vicar’s jaws snapped once, twice, at the air where the hunter had just been. The folding blade snapped back and tore through her ribs. When the beast crumpled with the impact, the hunter drove a damned _hand_ through the fabric over her eye socket. The clenched fist tore back out in a torrent of blood.

The last Vicar of the Healing Church collapsed, her claws scrabbling for the altar, and with one final sob of a bark, she was no more.

Good riddance, the Crow thought. Someone else could afford the Vicar her due reverence, if any with faith still remained in the night.

The hunter below was standing still, their chest heaving, their leathers completely slicked with blood. With a slide of their glove across their face, they began to approach the tall altar. They were entirely unaware of the curious gaze tracking them from the balcony.

A thin envelope sealed with wax weighed at the Crow’s side like a stone.

More time was needed to observe, to decide. Surely this hunter would be easy enough to follow just by the path they would slice through the city.

The hunter rolled their shoulders and shook their head as they stumbled away from the skull upon the altar. Their arms were tense at their sides as they took hurried strides back out to the Cathedral Ward.

From above, the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title only partially latin this time -- stiriaca for 'frozen' and sire for well, sire-- though in double meaning, as in the sire of nobility and "to sire" something. gotta love those blood dregs!
> 
> i'm gonna keep the hunter they/them as per usual. but i'm gonna keep the bloody crow so mysterious as to have no pronouns used at all... for now
> 
> as always, thank you so much for reading and i hope you enjoyed! this is obviously a sharp veering off of what generally happens in the game so i hope it will be fun for you all to explore with me. i will be continuing this story as i attempt to fill the other prompts. this is also more of just an introductory chapter-- future chapters will be more from the hunter's POV.
> 
> prompt fill wombo combo of: snow illusion royalty sword


	2. Chapter 2

The moon shone down silver, the distant water glittered over deep navy, and the red-hot poker slotted between the hunter’s ribs with the intent to kebab their lungs. A frustrated cry tore out of them at the pain, rising in pitch at the hiss of searing flesh. The hunter’s weapon unfolded and flew wide in retaliation. Blood followed the arc of the blade.

The fight ended. Bodies were strewn across hard-packed dirt on the path to the witches’ abode. The hunter paused, wiped at their face, and realized the effort was useless when their glove and sleeve and whole damned arm were painted with red. They sighed and looked up at the decrepit yet imposing structure ahead of them.

The back of the hunter’s neck prickled. They turned on their heel and stared down the slope of the path. A wandering madwoman? A remnant dog? Another ploddingly massive executioner that had emerged from the carnage?

The hunter squinted and flitted their gaze from the slight wavering of the tall weeds to the dim windows of the surrounding shanties. Nothing moved. Nothing matched their gaze.

Why, then, had they felt so _seen_ since venturing out of the cathedral?

An experience in Old Yharnam had left them with claws in their guts and a new instinct to look _up_. The hunter glanced across the rooftops.

There— distant and small, but something oily-dark and rustling in the coastal breeze. The hunter’s shoulders slumped. Nothing but a crow. Not worth their time.

The hunter turned and slunk inside the building, disappearing into the hazy dark within.

When the feathers parted, a head donned in silver glinted in the moonlight.

* * *

The hunter pushed their palm against a gouged socket as they fumbled through their belt for a vial. The witches were dead, as were their shadowy servants. They had been easy enough to dispatch— except for the binding arcane grip that had left the hunter wriggling as their eyes were scooped from their head.

The blessed blood helped. The hunter blinked. They glanced at the soft glow of the lantern, then off to the dim stairwell on the far wall. They stood still.

They turned on their heel and caught their pursuer taking the final step down the entrance stairs.

The hunter gripped the handle of their blade and eyed the strange figure warily. The last crow had been kind enough, with roughly encouraging words and a few slips of rune-marked paper, but one could never be too careful. This one held a different air; there was a smell, metallic and sharp, that grew as the crow approached with long and easy strides.

The crow stopped a few paces away from the lantern. The hunter peered at the helm: there were intricate designs embossed upon it, but in the murky interior of the chamber it was impossible to tell what they were. 

The crow bowed deeply, enough that one knee dropped to the stone floor, and one arm was thrown out wide. The hunter noticed that beneath the cloth and feather cloak was more of that fine silvery plate. 

The hunter pursed their lips. A knight? A crow? Both, or neither? They jolted from their thoughts when they realized that they must return the politeness. What would be best? To mirror the gesture? They remembered, dimly, the Doll bowing forward in simple greeting. The hunter pressed their hands to their thighs as they bent and inclined their head, though not far enough to ever lose sight of the stranger.

The crow knight stood and sorted through the contents of some hidden pocket. A thin envelope, aged and faintly spattered with blood, was held out towards the hunter in offering.

The hunter could not resist their curiosity. They dug a nail beneath the wax seal and pulled the envelope open.

“... A banquet,” they read in disbelief.

The crow knight did not respond.

“To celebrate the dawn,” they continued, and they only barely managed to hold back a laugh. “The dawn? When?” They held the letter close to their eyes and searched the remaining text. “To be held at…” they said, and they tilted their head. “Cainhurst Castle.”

They could not hide the alarm in their expression as they shot a glance at the crow knight; the only information they had about the isolated kingdom was both obscure and lurid— and entirely from that Alfred, they reminded themself, who quite frankly seemed a little obsessed.

“The stagecoach leaves from Hemwick crossing,” they read, their tone now far more sober.

The crow knight nodded and then lifted a hand; the gauntleted fingers curled in towards the palm, beckoning the hunter to come along. The crow knight was halfway up the stairs when the hunter finally found the wits to follow.

* * *

The stagecoach was already waiting near the central statuary of the ramshackle village; two tall and handsomely tacked horses snorted and stamped the ground impatiently as the crow knight pulled the door open. The reins clacked against the vacant driver’s box. The hunter stared at the golden lions rearing within the castle’s seal upon the door before taking a deep breath and climbing inside.

The interior was lavish, upholstered with rich red fabric, draped in velvet curtains, and lit with softly sputtering lanterns. The hunter took a seat upon the left bench. The crow knight followed behind and pulled the door shut before settling down on the right. The two benches were close enough that their knees could knock together if the hunter wasn’t careful.

There were a few short moments of silence before the horses lurched the coach into motion. The plushness of the cushions mostly disguised the hard wood of the seat but when the carriage jostled the hunter could feel the impact ding up from their tailbone. They winced and shifted. The crow knight seemed unbothered, sitting at ease with legs lounging wide and an arm thrown across the cushioned backing.

The rough roads of Hemwick gave way to something smoother; the hunter settled back into their seat. There was some distant thought nagging them, worming into their awareness— what was it? A growing urgency to trade collected echoes with the dear Doll? That didn’t seem quite right. Something they had forgotten? (They _had_ forgotten, too much and too quickly to even be mourned, diluted to nothing in the new blood, but they had already contended with that in their own time.)

Something, then, that they had failed to notice?

Wind whistled past the door as the carriage picked up speed. The air of the night had a pervasive autumnal chill, but within the carriage the flame of the lamplights created a stuffiness. The hunter pulled at the cloth mask tied taut over their nose and dropped it to rest loosely around their neck. 

They knew the knight wasn’t much of a talker but their only other substantial conversations had been brief and nervous exchanges with the dweller in the chapel. When they opened their mouth to speak, the crow knight held up a hand. The hunter frowned and their eyebrows furrowed.

The crow knight leaned forward and tapped an armored fingertip against the invitation. After a pointed pause, a hand swung forward with a flourish; the knight held up an embroidered handkerchief, impeccably laundered, as white as moonlight on fresh snow. The knight pantomimed wiping the cloth across the hunter’s face.

The hunter hesitated to reach for it. “Are you sure?” they asked. “It’s, er, nice. I’d hate to—” 

The knight leaned over them and cloth pressed against their temple. When it dragged against stiff flakes of dried blood, the knight drew back and rummaged through a belt; a small flask was tucked among the various supplies kept under the feathered coat. Once the handkerchief was damp it swept along the hunter’s face with ease. Their cloth mask had saved half of their face from the carnage but everything above the nose was streaked with dull red. The hunter was sure that most of the blood was even their own— remnants of the outpouring caused by the fight with the witches.

The hunter held very still as the gauntlet gently dragged along their cheekbone, over the bridge of their nose, and then up to the slope of their brow. When they caught glimpses of the cloth they saw that it had been stained to a rusty mottle.

The handkerchief was folded and tucked away; the crow knight cupped a hand to the hunter’s cheek and tilted their head left, then right. The hunter must have been tidied to some level of satisfaction, for the knight did not retrieve the cloth again— but neither did the hand pull away.

The steel edge of the knight’s thumb traced along the lower arc of the hunter’s eye socket. The chill of the metal nipped at the thin and delicate skin beneath the hunter’s eyelashes.

The carriage was moving so smoothly. If the pressure was to increase, if the sharp point of the gauntlet was to dig into sclera, if the knight plucked out the inexplicably precious eye that the witches had sought so viciously— 

It would not be an accident.

The pistol was a familiar weight at their hip. The hunter knew they could retrieve it and have deterrent or at least retaliation against an attack, but their instincts had gone to slush; they felt only a pervasive stillness as they stared up at the expressionless silver helm. Their pulse thudded deep in their ears.

But the sharp fingers only slid back down their cheek and patted them with an abrupt fondness that made the hunter blink. The crow knight leaned back against the opposite seat and the hunter could sense by the relaxed posture and slight tilt of the head that the knight was amused.

The stagecoach slowed. The hunter steadied themself. As they rolled to a stop, the crow knight pushed at the latch of the door.

The hunter lifted a hand to shade their brow and squinted against the pale gray and pink light of the early dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i truly should know from past experience that i do not know how to predict how many chapters a story will take but i'm going to adjust my estimate to say: more than three for this one
> 
> as always, thank you for reading and i hope you enjoyed! <3


	3. Chapter 3

The crow knight stood just outside the coach and held the door open; the hunter followed slowly, their eyes caught by the faint pastel spread of the sky. The sight of early sunrise felt more dreamlike than the dreams the hunter had actually been in.

The long Yharnam night had felt inescapable, like a heavy lurking layer of pitch broken only by the light of the moon. They had hunted their way through the darkened city and its periphery for what had felt like far too long. But morning always came, the hunter rationalized; the sun and moon had shared the sky on the same schedule for centuries and would continue to do so for many more.

Even so, their disbelief was evident. As the hunter slowly exited the stagecoach and stared at the sky, the crow knight’s helm tilted, affecting amusement at the hunter’s confusion.

The hunter tore their sight from the sky and instead looked at their more immediate surroundings. The stagecoach had parked on a wide stone street marked in intervals by carved archways. A low wall marked the edges of the road; past that was a precipitous drop to the water below. The hunter turned. Beyond the water, the dim silhouette of Hemwick slumped along the far coast, and beyond that loomed the high spires of Yharnam, and in the space between, the road that the stagecoach must have traversed—

“Hail,” a woman called out, and a few additional voices giggled. The hunter twisted around and finally looked towards the castle itself. Ahead was a wide set of stairs, smoothed in the center for horses and wheeled supply carts to ascend; the path led up to an imperious castle wall and a massive doorway. The great door had been propped open and a cluster of women stood at the threshold. All shared the pale skin and hair that hallmarked Cainhurst nobility; while there were minute variations in pattern, they also all shared what must have been the popular fashion of the kingdom’s highest classes. All the edges of their dresses were patterned with glistening lace, an intricate silver filigree that sparkled in the morning light. The hunter also spotted the richer gleam of jewelry; red must have been in vogue, for each of the women had rubies and garnets strewn from neck to breast. 

The only aspect of the outfits that struck the hunter as odd was a layered strip of plain cotton cloth kept high on the forehead. Meant for keeping the fine long hair off the face, the hunter figured; the wind coming off the water was quite strong.

The women peered down at the hunter with obvious interest. Feeling adrift, the hunter made the same little bow that they had given the crow knight back in Hemwick. The women tittered. A few returned curtseys. 

There was a firm push at their shoulder; the crow knight urged the hunter towards the women before setting attention to the care of the horses after the journey. The hunter took a deep breath and began ascending the stairs with more trepidation than they had felt when striding up to a slavering beast.

“Returning from the long night with the gift of a guest,” one woman said as she approached the hunter and clasped their gloved hand between her own, heedless of the blood soaked into the leather. “Crows do have a penchant for bringing pretty curiosities back to the nest.”

The hunter cleared their throat. “It’s an honor to be here.”

“An honor to have you,” the woman replied, and she squeezed their hand briefly before dropping her hands to her sides. “Lady Elaine.”

The hunter nodded and repeated the little bow; at the very least, the women seemed amused and not offended by the hunter’s manner.

“The little pinched-face one there is Lady Alanna,” Elaine said, and the woman she had pointed out made a sharp inhale of affront. Elaine smirked. “Only I may tease her, we’ve been friends for years and enemies for longer. That one there is Lady Sofia, and then Lady Irene. Lady Camilla, there.” The women she named curtseyed in turn. 

Elaine gestured towards one that had stood a few paces apart from the group; she had offered the hunter some initial attention but now her gaze was fixed out towards the gleaming water. “My dear sister, Emmeline.”

If the hunter was meant to see a familial resemblance, they supposed it was there, but all the noblewomen looked quite alike. Emmeline gave them a slight nod before looking back out at the coast.

“We’re expected at the hall, so we mustn’t dally,” Elaine said loudly, as if to command the whole group, but her gaze was still fixed upon her sister. “The crow has returned; the rest will soon follow. Better to greet them properly at the banquet than accost them here when they’ll be all filthy with the night,” she said, and she flitted her fingers over the tacky red smeared across the hunter’s collar.

The hunter winced. Elaine smiled brightly and grasped their elbow as she briskly strode through the vast doorway. “Worry not, poor thing— you won’t be paraded like this for much longer. We’ll have a bath drawn, and you’ll have a beautiful wardrobe to choose from, and you’ll sit by _me_ at the banquet, won’t you? I have a wonderful seat, being so close to the Queen. And— _Emmeline_ ,” she said, her tone harsh as she turned. “You _are_ coming, aren’t you?”

“I want to wait for him,” Emmeline replied, her voice soft. She leaned against the stone frame of the door with a sigh.

“He _will_ return,” Elaine retorted, “but he won’t do it any faster with you standing there.”

Emmeline let her head rest against the stone at her side and stood still. Elaine _tsk_ ed and pulled at the hunter’s arm.

The inner courtyard had a tall fountain, assorted statuary, and well-manicured foliage that had thinned a bit for the season but still stood out as rich green against the gray of the surrounding stone. It was all quite pleasant but the statues made the hunter blink. They had grown so accustomed to the heavily cloaked and often faceless sculptures in Yharnam that to see a starkly human form— a _nude_ human form, in many cases— was a surprise.

The hunter craned their head back; the structure of the castle seemed circuitous, with parapets winding from wall to tower and back again. One long arching bridge stretched from the topmost part of the wall to a high level of the central keep. Below that was a golden door illuminated by torchlight.

The natural rockiness of the island did lead to some marring of the pretty landscape; to the hunter’s right was a steep slope into a marshy pit, deep enough to perhaps reach the level of the surrounding water beyond the wall. The hunter wrinkled their nose; there was an unpleasant scent carried up on the breeze: still water, vegetable rot, and again that heady metallic sting of— 

“This way,” Elaine said happily, and the hunter was dragged along.

* * *

The interior of the castle was a gleaming blur: more women in finery, floors polished to a mirror shine, tall columns of gilded marble, intricate stained glass— and in the dark corners, gray-robed hunched figures at work keeping it all clean. They did not meet the hunter’s eyes and indeed went so quiet and still when the coterie of noblewomen walked past that it seemed as if they did not want to be noticed at all. To the hunter, that just made them stand out all the more.

Elaine was talking as she pulled the hunter along, but it was more a conversation with her fellow noblewomen than anything the hunter felt involved in. At the moment, the hunter felt like no more than some new fascinating bangle being shown off on the lady’s wrist. 

The hunter wondered if the crow knight would be partaking in the banquet. The knight might not even be recognizable with the silver helm removed and the feathered cloak set aside for the day. 

The group turned down a long hallway dimly lit by periodic candles; all along the walls were painted portraits. A woman and her babe, a knight without a helm, what may have been past regents standing proud in furred finery; the hunter struggled to see them given the pace Elaine kept. A few other candlelit halls, all laden with their own collections of portraits, split off from the one they strode through and veered further into the castle. 

It was in the next hallway they passed that the hunter spotted a distant figure; the sight almost made them stop in their tracks. No candles were lit along that long path, and the hanging portraits were no more than framed shadows. But in the dark distance they could clearly see the shape of a woman standing alone. There was the soft paleness of bare shoulders, and a simple dress made colorless by the lack of light— a servant girl, perhaps, with the task of tending to the many candles?

The woman’s head tilted and there was a glint— shining like metal, but following a shape like the curve of a skull’s jaw.

The hunter felt a flash of _awareness_ , of seeing and being seen. The back of their neck prickled. Their muscles seized with the drive to run down that hall and discover what stood there alone, but they were soon swept into some adjoining wing of the castle where Elaine and the other ladies kept their rooms.

* * *

The bath was soothingly warm and the water had been topped off with a dizzying variety of perfumes, oils, and soaps. The hunter sank a little lower into the bubbles; they were grateful for the opportunity to scrape the long Yharnam night from their skin, but they were doubly grateful that the noblewomen had given them some privacy in the bath. The hunter wasn’t annoyed with them— Elaine and the others were overbearing, sure, but it was a welcome change of pace from the locked doors and mocking laughter in the city. Instead, the hunter was fighting off embarrassment at what must have been a terrible faux pas.

There had been the matter of their gear. The leather overcoat and sturdy pants they had claimed right off a corpse had been easy enough to give up with the promise that it would all be laundered and returned. Their pistol and blade, however…

When Alanna or Camilla or Sofia or one of the others had held out her hands with a smile to take the weapons and place them safely aside, the hunter had gone very still.

 _Without fear in our hearts, we're little different from the beasts themselves,_ that kind crow had told them, and the hunter had certainly felt fear, frigid and squirming at the base of their neck, at the thought of handing over their weapons. 

And the longer the hunter stood there, locked up with that cold fear, the more strained and confused the woman’s smile became.

 _I am in their home_ , the hunter rationalized. _In their castle, as their guest, and the sun has now long risen. One can trust another, here, and to have such a tight grip on my blade is to say I do not trust them._

When they had handed over the blade, the woman had played at staggering at the weight. The other women oohed and aahed at the matted blood and fur caught in the serrated metal. To the hunter’s relieved delight the weapons weren’t taken far; Sofia had oft worked gems and blood into her husband’s weaponry and so she took it to her adjacent chamber for repair.

The hunter supposed they couldn’t stay in the bath forever; there was the banquet to attend and the water had cooled. They dried themself, ran their fingers through the short tangles of their hair, and pulled on a vastly oversized robe that Elaine had set out for them.

They padded back into the main chamber; Elaine hurried through pouring wine into many burnished metal cups sitting on a silver tray. The other noblewomen lounged about the room, some at a mirrored vanity, others upon the wide spread of the bed. “A little toast to the dawn,” Elaine said as she tilted the bottle over the final glass. “Then we can get you all dressed up and take you to the banquet.”

The cups were distributed; the hunter kept the robe tightly bundled about them as they took their wine from Elaine with a grateful nod. The hunter made to sip at it but hesitated; none of the other women had yet partaken. Instead, Elaine turned to Alanna, and Sofia turned to Irene; each of the women paired off and held their cups out to one another. Elaine had only filled each cup halfway; this allowed each woman to pour her wine into the other’s, and then the other could decant it back into the original cup.

The ritual repeated and the women switched partners with a few tittering laughs. Elaine turned to the hunter and held out her cup. “It’s a funny little tradition, but we keep it,” she explained. “To prevent poisoning— or, if there is to be a poisoning, it must be shared amongst us all.”

She poured her wine, sending it sloshing into the hunter’s portion. The hunter watched the rich burgundy swirl for a moment before offering to pour Elaine’s half back to her.

Once they had finished, Elaine grinned and lifted her cup; the wine was gone in a few deep swallows. “Come, sit,” she said, and she pulled the hunter to the vanity. “We’ll find you an outfit.”

The hunter sat and slowly drank their wine as the women fussed over the contents of Elaine’s wardrobe. 

* * *

“The blue is entirely unbecoming,” Elaine snapped as Alanna held out a lump of fabric that the hunter supposed was a dress. “It doesn’t compliment the skin at all.”

“It’s _your_ wardrobe,” Alanna griped.

“It would compliment the skin with a bit of powder,” Irene said as she sifted through the contents of the vanity.

Sofia leaned against the edge of the bed and eyed the opened drawers with a sly expression. “I think the trousers are far more fetching.”

“You’re severely lacking in ribbon,” Alanna said, and Elaine furrowed her eyebrows. “I have a new set I haven’t yet worn; better to see it on someone else before I attempt them on myself.” She threw the dress back in the general direction of the wardrobe before walking briskly into the hall. 

Elaine scowled and strode up to the avalanche of clothes the search had left on the floor; the hunter didn’t have the chance to see what she picked out because Irene had started patting powder onto their cheeks. They cleared their throat. “I’m not one much for—”

“Nonsense, dear, you’ll look like a farmhand without it,” she said, and the powder puff dusted over their nose. “What do you think would better pop, Elaine? A red or a pink for the lips?” 

Once there was no risk of errant powder falling into their wine, the hunter downed the rest of it.

* * *

The hunter glanced at the vanity mirror and wished the crow knight was still around to wipe their face clean. They weren’t quite used to the sight of their own face in the first place— the mirror in the Dream was cracked and dull— and so to see it powdered pale had them doubly unsettled. Their shirt fit well enough, with a few ostentatious ruffles running down from the neck and sleeves that alternated between tight bands and loose stretches of fabric. The trousers were more of a miss. They somehow managed to be too wide about the hips and too tight at the calves, but with the help of a belt they remained in place. 

They had managed to keep custody of some of their gear; they had secretly shoved a few blood vials into the robe when undressing for the bath, and now they were safely tucked in a pocket of the trousers. The hand lantern they figured would cause no offense by keeping and it was now attached to their borrowed belt. They had considered keeping a few of the scalpel-thin throwing knives but had decided against it, the sharp secrecy of the blades making it feel too much like some sort of pre-emptive betrayal.

The hunter sorely missed their hat. Irene had happily combed through their hair, but it still seemed messy to their eyes. They tucked a stray strand back behind their ear and frowned at their own reflection.

There was movement behind them in the mirror. The hunter froze. Alanna had left the door to Elaine’s quarters wide open when she left, and so the hallway beyond was reflected in the polished metal. In the distant end of the hall was a dreadfully familiar silhouette. The light of the candles guttered, but the hunter could see the delicate firelight reflecting against silver— and a band of dark cloth bound across where the woman’s eyes should have been— 

The hunter twisted around in the seat, startling Irene so badly she dropped the powder puff. Just as the hunter fixed their gaze towards the hallway, Alanna bustled into the room with an armful of ribbons and closed the door behind her.

“Took you long enough,” Elaine complained. “We’ve already got this one dressed up. You’d be overdoing it with all that, now.”

Alanna huffed. “You couldn’t have _waited_?”

“I feared we’d miss the banquet by the time you crawled back here under the weight of your collection,” Elaine replied.

“And you frightened our hunter, barging in like that,” Irene chastised, and she patted her palm against their shoulder. “You know how it is. A beast under every bed.”

The hunter searched through murky memories for something Alfred had said. Cainhurst had been host to something long ago, and the Executioners had cleansed… a conflict…

“Is your castle known for ghosts?” they asked abruptly, and the women turned to look at them.

“I know plenty of ghost stories,” Irene said with a grin.

“Every old sad place has ghosts,” Elaine replied, “from castle to hovel to empty field. All it takes, I think, is for blood to spill. So, yes. The castle may have ghosts.”

Alanna sniffed. “You could take blood and spill it somewhere else. That wouldn’t make a ghost.”

Elaine glared at her. “I like you much better when you don’t say such stupid things.”

“No, I think she’s right,” Irene said as she idly petted the softness of the powder puff. “Like how that Church delivers it out by the quart. Say a wagon overturns and the road runs red with the stuff. I don’t think that would make a ghost.”

“Or if you just get a little cut,” Alanna added, emboldened. “Blood may spill but you wouldn’t _die_. There’s no ghost to be had there.”

Elaine pressed her fingers to her temples. “I _meant_ a _murder_. Blood spilling from a _death_ , not a— a wagon crash or whatever you were on about.” She fanned her face with her hand. “Let’s leave for the great hall. I’m growing faint in here. You’re all pulling the life out of the room.”

* * *

The hunter was pulled along to the great hall— and it _was_ great, with long oak tables set with beautiful ceramic dishes and cutlery shined to sparkle. Food had already been put out and the scent of it all made the hunter’s stomach growl. The courses were all concealed under silver lids, but the smell of meat, melted butter, fresh bread, and a hint of fruit and sugar wafted through the gaps— the hunter swallowed. They couldn’t quite remember the last time they had a proper meal.

Elaine pulled them over and bade them sit in the seat beside her. The hunter squinted at the array of forks and spoons astride their plate. There was a cup for water, and another for wine, but their setting had a conspicuously empty spot. They gave a furtive glance towards Elaine’s setting and noticed a third, much smaller cup set beside the others. It seemed to already have a little portion of wine within it; a finer vintage reserved for the nobles, they supposed.

When they reached for their napkin cloth to set it in their lap, Elaine tapped at their wrist. 

“Not yet,” she explained. “All at once, when our Majesty arrives.”

There were more women filing into the room, and a few men as well, but as the flow into the room came to a stop and the assorted nobles took their seats the hunter noticed that many of the places set remained empty.

“...Emmeline,” the hunter said after a long struggle to remember the name. “Lady Emmeline.”

Elaine furrowed her eyebrows and frowned at the hunter.

“Is she joining us?” the hunter asked, and they twisted in their seat to look towards the doors to the great hall. “Your sister. She was waiting for the other hunters to return. And the other hunters returning home— they were to be at the banquet?”

Elaine did not respond; the hunter turned back to look at her. “Isn’t that why she was—”

Shock strangled them. Their eyes went wide as they stared at the head of the table. The apparition had returned— the woman standing calmly, her long pale arms at her sides, her dull indigo dress hanging low from her shoulders. The faint blonde of her hair draped over her collarbone stood out only because of the exceptional pallor of her skin. She had no face— or, it was obscured beneath metal, the hunter figured out as their mind made a little more sense of the image— she wore a helm much like the knight crow’s own. The bottom portion jutted like a jaw and the carvings beneath hinted at a rictus grin, but the curved expanse above was embossed with flowing patterns. A long ribbon was tied across the silver covering her eyes, but her head turned ever so slowly, and again, the hunter had the bone-deep recognition that she was looking at them.

The hunter stood so quickly that their chair nearly toppled behind them. The silver mask inclined minutely as she watched them. To the hunter’s astonishment, all the ladies and lords in the room stood, as well.

Elaine curtseyed low. The hunter shot a panicked glance around the rest of the room and mirrored the extended-arm posture of the distinctive Cainhurst bow.

The apparition spoke. “The end of another piteous night,” she said with her tone kept low, and every syllable was clear despite the metal encasing her face. A gray-robed servant pulled back a chair; she lowered herself onto it. “And the coming of another dawn. Sit.”

The room resounded with the faint shuffling of cloth and the quiet squeaking of the wooden chairs as the nobles sat back down. The hunter felt incapable of tearing their gaze away from her as they slowly returned to their seat.

The hunter had expected the queen to be done up in unmistakable finery, to wear ostentation great enough to elevate her above the lords and ladies all dressed up at the table; the hunter now figured that the power of the queen was as such that she could wear any damn thing she pleased.

The queen unfolded the napkin at her place setting; the rest of the hall followed her movement. The hunter pulled the cloth to their lap and gripped it tightly.

Conversation began again. Elaine leaned over and smiled at the hunter. “Are you quite familiar with such a spread?” she asked. 

The hunter chewed at the interior of their cheek. “If I am, in truth, I don’t remember.”

“Ah, I can teach you, or teach you again,” she said. The hall began to echo with the scrape and clink of the lids being removed from platters and portions being distributed. The hunter’s plate was loaded with a cut of baked fish, some form of poached egg, and a green stalky vegetable unfamiliar to them swimming in butter. 

Elaine lifted one of their forks and pointed it at them. “Now, this is a much more casual affair, so don’t worry too unduly about making a fool of yourself. We aren’t even doing proper courses— I’m sure that most attending are more than ready to settle into bed after the long night, so we’re just having everything all at once. This small one is the salad fork, then this beside it is the proper fork for everything else. Well, almost everything else. The little one on your right— it’s best for oysters. They’re fresh, here, always— and the best you may ever taste, I promise you.” 

She grabbed their knife and arranged the utensils in her hand so that the knife was in the right and the fork was in the left, with the sharp tines aimed down at the plate. She cut at the baked fish and pressed the flaky meat up so that it was balanced upon the back curve of the tines. “This is the proper manner,” she explained. “Is it familiar to you at all?”

The hunter shook their head.

She grinned and lifted the fork with the fish balanced carefully upon it, and then held it to the hunter’s mouth as if expecting them to let her feed them.

The hunter restrained a sigh before leaning slightly forward and opening their mouth. The tip of the fork grazed their lips, but then it tilted and the bit of fish tumbled into their lap.

“Ah, silly me,” Elaine snickered. “I’ve always had shaky hands.”

The hunter swore under their breath and gathered the mess up in their napkin; it hadn’t caught the spill as it had been balled up by their tight grip. The fish had ended up just as buttery as the vegetables and they hated to stain the trousers— trousers borrowed from Irene, they remembered, who had slighted Elaine by agreeing with Alanna. 

They felt a need to reclaim their utensils from Elaine lest the rest of their meal end up a vengeful smear.

“Lady Elaine,” a noble unknown to the hunter said, and to their relief she set their fork and knife down in order to turn and address her. The woman held out her cup: the smaller cup that had been half-filled with wine. Elaine nodded and hurriedly grabbed her own. The wine was poured; Elaine’s cup was now full while the other woman’s was once more at half.

Elaine scooted her seat back and stood. “The next is— ugh, _Sofia._ Why did she leave such a gap?” She strode off to share the portion of wine with the next noble.

The hunter grabbed their larger, already full cup. “Do I…?”

Elaine was already a half dozen paces away and there was no one else around to ask. The hunter let out a long-held sigh. They ventured a glance up the table; the other nobles were happily eating, drinking, and conversing, but at the most prominent seat— 

The hunter fixed their stare back down at their plate. Would the queen remove her mask (her crown? Was it merely the island kingdom’s custom for the royalty to be marked in this way?) to eat with her subjects? With the mask removed, what would the hunter see? A pretty face, a plain one, or one that had been terribly marred? 

Would they see the same eyes they had felt so intensely matching their own?

They shot another furtive look up the table.

The queen had no food upon her plate and her silverware had not been moved. Or it had, the hunter noticed; there was a slight tilt to the knife, as if it had been lifted and set down again. She had not removed her mask. She held the napkin between her hands and twisted it idly, pushing it with one palm into the other.

There was the metallic smell again— easily explained by the frequent pouring of wine from metal cup to metal cup, the hunter thought, and yet something about it transfixed them. It was only like blood in that both were reminiscent of iron, and yet also like blood in the way it made the mouth twinge, in how it pricked at the senses and demanded attention— 

_All varieties of blood_ , the deathly ill man (ah, _Gilbert_ , they could remember it!) had said of the Healing Church. Varieties, flavors, strains. And then Alfred had said— 

Elaine settled back into her seat and before she could commandeer the silverware, the hunter returned their attention to their plate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, All Bound Widow/ Silver Lady OCs! but hey, annalise is here now too.
> 
> just in case the blood dilution scene was a little too obtuse-- annalise cut her hand and drained her blood into the closest noble's cup-- then that cup is poured and mixed into the next, and so on and so on, until the furthest person receives the least portion of blood. 
> 
> the hunter, surrounded by what may be ghosts, seeing one definitely real person around in the mirror: holy shit a ghost?
> 
> thank you so much for reading and i hope you enjoyed!


	4. Chapter 4

It was Irene that latched onto the hunter first when the banquet ended. She fussed over the greasy patch left on the hunter’s borrowed trousers, daubing at it with a wet cloth napkin.

“You’re leaving an even bigger spot by smearing it around like that,” Sofia said.

“Water won’t help,” Alanna insisted. “You’ll want to use soda ash.”

Irene stood back and dipped the napkin back into a cup while shooting the hunter a vexed look. The hunter took a deep breath and let it out slowly; they had already given several apologies and they weren’t sure if she wanted her anger indulged with more or if she merely wanted them silent.

Elaine pursed her lips. “Wouldn’t it be best to put a new pair of trousers on? Just send these off to be laundered. You can borrow something of mine, instead,” she said, and the hunter jumped when her fingers jabbed at their hips. “These don’t even fit very well— see how tightly the belt is kept? And the pockets are bulging— ah _ha,_ ” she said with a grin, and the hunter went rigid as she snaked her hands into the fabric and retrieved their stowed-way blood vials. The injection mechanism snagged on the hem of their pocket and then clattered to the floor when she pulled them out.

Frigid panic flashed up the back of the hunter’s neck. They reached out as if to snatch the vials back from her grip but she stepped away with a twirl of her skirts and held the murky glass up to the light. “How kind of you,” Elaine said with a laugh. “You’ve contributed to the banquet by bringing us dessert.”

“It’s not our _favorite_ ,” Irene said as she eyed the vials, the stain now forgotten and her hands holding the napkin tightly. “But it’s appreciated all the same. How many are there?”

“Six,” Elaine answered. “The perfect amount for our little party.”

“There’s five of us,” Alanna said with a confused frown. “Isn’t there? Me, you, Sofia, Irene, and Camilla—” 

“I’m _including_ our dear _hunter_ in the count,” Elaine replied with a sneer, but her expression softened when she glanced at them. “Really, this is _too kind_ of you. It isn’t often that we see such sweet blood from the mainland.”

The hunter had been so dependent upon the healing blood for the unmaking of grievous wounds that they had forgotten the tucked away taverns, the bottled-up cocktails, and the piles and piles of abandoned deliveries. Proper blood ministration meant to cure the incurable was an artform kept tightly controlled by the Church and its clinics, but the common contents of a vial… the hunter wondered if it had supplanted water as the beverage of choice within the city.

The hunter struggled to find a way to keep the vials without drawing the ire of Elaine and the other noblewomen. “I intended to gift those to you as dessert, yes,” they said. “And I would love for all of us to partake of them _together_. But this banquet was so rich, and I am quite full.” That was partially true; they had managed to pick at their food for a while but they had drank perhaps a bit too much of the freely flowing wine. It was easy to do when the other nobles around were all drinking with the knowledge that they would soon be sleeping it off.

Because that was what Elaine had said— the banquet was all one course, because the terror of the night had ended, the hunters had all returned, and soon all the nobles would settle into their beds— 

“Nonsense,” Elaine said, and the hunter stared as she pulled the cork from a vial. “We’ll drink it now. If you let it sit too long it’ll go stale.”

Alanna tilted her head. “I don’t think it will go—”

“Say another word and I will drink your portion myself,” Elaine snapped, and Alanna’s lips were then pressed in a tight line. 

The vials were distributed; the hunter gripped theirs tightly. The wine had already put a warm and uneasy buzzing at the fringes of their senses. The scent of the uncorked vial brought an additional lightheadedness that they did not appreciate.

“No need to repour amongst ourselves,” Elaine said with a smile. “I think we’ve all picked our poison well.”

The vials tilted; the women all drank deep. The hunter watched warily before lifting their own to their lips. They would merely _pretend_ to drink it, they decided, and then palm the vial and cork it back up without any of the women noticing.

Then they would still have one last secret safeguard against harm, they thought as the deep sweet blood flowed over their tongue. They swallowed and shuddered. _Wait_. 

The hunter had almost emptied the vial before noticing that they had been drinking it at all. They had always injected the blood, using the sharp little mechanism to slam it directly into the thigh in careful doses— but now, with the glass to their lips, the stuff begged to be imbibed. The hunter nearly gagged as they pulled back their tongue and constricted their throat. They felt the familiar heated rush of the healing blood at work, a euphoric sparking of the veins that soothed out old aches and pains that they hadn’t realized were still there. The effect combined with the wine had them gently swaying.

As the women all wavered and giggled, the hunter spat the small amount of remnant blood back into the vial, shivered, and then shoved it back into their pocket.

“All this talk of trading trousers and we haven’t even considered how exhausted you must be,” Elaine said as she drifted a hand across the hunter’s shoulder. “Good _morning_ , dear ladies, and may your rest be dreamless and deep. I’ll be returning to my chambers.”

“Sleep,” the hunter murmured. “Where should I—”

Elaine grasped their hand and pulled them along.

* * *

“You wish for me to sleep with you,” the hunter said, their disorientation leaving them blunt.

Elaine sat on the edge of the bed and huffed. “You needn’t say it so scandalously,” she said with a pout. “And you see the size of this bed— it would fit us and the four others with room to invite yet more.” She wrested the thick quilt up and slid herself beneath it before shifting onto her side.

The hunter took a deep breath, held it, and then let it back out. In truth, they didn’t expect any romantic advances from Elaine; her manner of invitation felt more like the hunter was being seen as a favored dog given the honor of warming the foot of the bed. They crawled beneath the covers and attempted to contend with the murky swirling of their thoughts.

When they opened their mouth, Elaine shifted under the covers and pulled the quilt tight against her ear. “I don’t favor speaking before I sleep, I find it leads to unpleasant dreams.”

The question tore out of them anyway. “Emmeline,” the hunter said. “Your sister. I still haven’t seen her come inside.”

Elaine was silent. The hunter blinked and tried to ignore the way the canopy curtain over the bed kept swimming in their vision.

“She has someone to wait for,” Elaine eventually said, and the hunter was startled back to wakefulness. “Someone to warm her bed.”

The hunter rolled onto their side in order to look at the back of her head. “You don’t?” they asked honestly.

“No,” she replied. “Not anymore.”

Their sudden surge of sympathy both surprised and sobered the hunter. They nestled their cheek against their pillow and frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sleeping,” she replied curtly, and the hunter watched the steady rise and fall of the quilt pulled up over her shoulder. When it eventually slowed, they closed their eyes.

* * *

The hunter wished they would have had a dream— a _real_ one, not the drifting foggy isolation of Gehrman and the doll and the workshop, but instead a dream that could have been dissected for a little bit of clarity. Or a little bit of prophecy, even. But their sleep had been dark and dreamless and their mind had not presented any sense-wrapped-in-nonsense regarding their stay within Castle Cainhurst.

The hunter shivered and pushed their face against their pillow as they wrapped the blankets closer to their chest. It made sense for the air within a castle to run cold, but a chill had crept beneath all the comforting layers and seeped into their flesh.

“If thou’rt tired with playing the role of tightly-held doll, We will give audience to thee within the archives,” a voice stated, and the hunter jolted to awareness. They sat up, a struggle given the blankets they had cocooned themself in, and stared wide-eyed at the silver helm of the queen.

The hunter glanced behind them at the empty expanse of the bed. “Elaine—?”

“Lady Elaine left her chamber a few hours afore,” she stated, “on account of thee laying lordlike claim to all the blankets, it does seem. But she will soon return to dress thee up in whatever fashion she fancies.”

The hunter scrunched their eyes shut and dragged a hand across their forehead. Their mind struggled to come to speed. “I’m sorry. As an outsider new to both Yharnam and Cainhurst— should I be bowing again right now?”

“Kneeling,” she said flatly, and the silver helm hid any response to the hunter’s fluster. “But We have a deep well of mercy to draw from, and so thy new bed will not be in the dungeon. Thine impropriety is forgiven.”

Ah—so the mask concealed a sense of humor; or, _hopefully,_ that was what it was. “Audience, then,” the hunter stammered. “In the archives.”

“Expediency is expected,” the queen replied, and as she walked out of the chamber the hunter extricated themself from the bedding and threw open Elaine’s wardrobe in search of proper clothing. 

* * *

Everything in the castle was built towards grandeur, but the Cainhurst archives were marginally more subdued. The columns were still topped with gleaming gold and the wooden floors were shined to a mirror gloss, but beyond the occasional tapestry there was less decoration around to catch the eye. It had clearly been built as a place to facilitate study, and the two tall stories of floor-to-ceiling books showed that it had been used well.

The hunter leaned against the second floor balcony and peered down to the room below. A few of the noblewomen were relaxing there. One was reciting poetry to her friends. The lilting rhythm of her words drifted up to the second floor but the hunter couldn’t quite make out what was being said. They thought one of the women may have been Sofia or Camilla but before they could place the face the queen spoke.

“I have been told of thine exploits;” she said as she took a seat at the head of a long table strewn with books and parchment, “however, the crow’s-eye view is but one perspective, and a limited one, at that. Sit.” She waved a hand towards the far end of the table. A few of the gray-robed servants had set up a tea, with a conspicuously large gap cleared between the silver tray and the stacks of books. To ensure no stray spills ended up on the parchment, the hunter figured; they could understand the caution but they also hoped that the incident with Elaine hadn’t morphed into some over-embellished rumor about the hunter being a terribly messy eater.

“Tell Us,” the queen said, and she dipped a quill into an inkwell, “of thyself. Of thy beginnings, humble or no, of thy travel to the city— of the city itself. Any detail dredged up is of value to Us, even if it seems to thee to be terribly mundane.”

The hunter took a deep breath and held their fingers against their teacup; the chill had not yet left them and the heat of the tea was soothing. There was another chill, too, beyond the simple cold; every time the queen’s silver helm canted up they felt the same piercing awareness of her gaze.

“At the very least, introduce thyself,” she said, and there was a sharp sardonicism to her tone. “For example, I am Annalise, Queen of Castle Cainhurst, daughter of Calista, and sister of none— but I am kin to any who share my oath. We have held reign over the kingdom for many years and We shall reign for many more.”

“I don’t know,” the hunter said, more harshly than they had intended, and they forced their tone back to a quiet calm. “I… I know I traveled to Yharnam for blood ministration, and so I must have been quite ill. And I must have come from a position where I could afford the journey, or I had others that cared for me enough to fund it. But beyond those few things I can surmise only through logic, I do not know.” They dragged a fingertip over the rim of the teacup. “When I reawakened in that clinic I may as well have been born again.”

The quill scratched against parchment. “Born of the blood, made men by the blood, and so on and so forth. But in the city— what of thine introduction to the long and peculiar night?”

The hunter furrowed their eyebrows. “That phrase—”

“Thou’rt familiar with the adage,” Annalise said. “Used and abused by the Church, but originating in the halls of Byrgenwerth.” She lifted the quill and slowly swung her arm out wide, gesturing towards the vast library. “Our own academic pursuits could never compare to the sheer outpouring of theses at the college but there was oft the trading of thoughts between us during happier times.” The helm tilted. “We were told of thy victory over the lone scholar left at the college. Our crow found it empty, as well as evidence that thou hadst passed through.”

The hunter tensed at the memory of a stinging silver spray, the bladed whip lashing at their throat, and the blinding shimmer of shooting stars. They nodded. 

“And the lake?” Annalise asked, and though her tone remained at the same low steadiness, the hunter could sense a hungry interest behind her words.

They had entered the lake. They could still recall the vertigo of the fall, the bloodrush of disbalance against the shifting lukewarm water giving way to flat clarity, and hiding inside— 

They shook their head. “I didn’t take the dive,” they answered. “Whatever the college was hiding felt a little too arcane for my experience. I had found many runes by then and yet had no way to make use of them. That was why I ventured into Hemwick— rumors of the lost tools for inscription being hidden away in the witches’ keep.”

The lie had been instinctive. As subtle as it had been, the tiny hint of hunger in her words belied some deeper and desperate interest in the contents of the lake, and that had brought a strange and unnamable horror into the hunter’s heart. 

But it had been idiotic to lie to her, they thought with a rising panic; the crow knight had followed them and could have seen them stride right off the balcony— 

“Runes,” Annalise echoed, and her tone did not reveal if she had sensed the hunter’s lie. “Thou bore witness the dear old Provost, did thee not?”

“The old man in the chair? Yes.”

“Thou didst not accost him?”

The hunter furrowed their eyebrows. “I spoke to him, and he pointed. That seemed to be all he had left in him to do.”

“Thou didst not attack him?”

“No?” they replied, their confusion evident. “Why would I?”

“Because he was there.”

The hunter stared at her, unsure of how to respond.

“An odd hunter thou art indeed,” Annalise said with a sigh, and she dipped the quill back into the well. “If runes hold thine interest, the crow returned with one quite curious in design: a luminous star with a gleaming eye hidden inside. And if thy wish is further experience with the arcane, then consider these archives thy place of study. We may not have yet ascended to the lofty planes of thought that the college boasted of, but given the recent vacancies of the campus… twould be a tragedy to let all that research moulder. As if the ground there was not soaked in tragedy enough. The crow hath liberated the most outstanding specimens of the work,” she said, and she tapped her fingers against the leatherbound stacks of books on the table. “It is in this that I request thine assistance. Thou’rt to read— skim, really— the work gathered here, and then I shall deem it of immediate use or meant for storage within the archive. But first,” she said, and she tapped the quill against the paper. “Thy recount of the night.”

“The crow knight was… following me,” the hunter replied. 

“Indeed,” Annalise said, “for all the long night. Something in thy manner must have sparkled.” The quill scratched at the parchment. “I am glad of that discerning eye. Thou'rt of interest to me.”

The hunter sipped at their tea, the intermixing of bitter and fragrant flavor flooding out the pervasive iron sting that seeped from the queen.

* * *

The hunter recounted their night as best they could— awakening in the clinic, the bloody path to Oedon Chapel, their ventures into Old Yharnam, the confrontation with the Vicar in the cathedral— and at that Annalise leaned back and took no notes at all, as if simply basking in the hunter’s words— and then, in what had felt like the darkest stretch of the night, the hunter’s descent into the forbidden woods.

“Confederates,” Annalise said thoughtfully as she dipped the quill. “I cannot say I find the name familiar.”

“They seem a bit… fringe,” the hunter admitted. “As kind as one could possibly be, but… have you heard of vermin, your majesty?”

“Vermin,” Annalise echoed. “No. Explain.”

“Vermin writhe deep within all filth,” the hunter recounted as they stared up towards the ceiling, as if that would help them better recall Valtr’s words. “They are the root of man’s impurity. Something along those lines.”

The helm tilted. “Impurity.”

“Little centipedes,” the hunter said, and they waggled their fingers to pantomime the many wriggling legs. “I don’t know if there’s any truth in it. They seem much like any sort of insect one would find in the woods, but they are quite frightful looking.” They sighed. “I only started spotting them once the man mentioned them. Funny how things are like that sometimes.”

She jotted something down. “These Confederates seek out impurity. What use do they make of it?”

“They crush it,” the hunter answered. “Right beneath the heel.”

She sighed and set the quill aside. “We have spoken of thy visit to the college,” she said, “and Hemwick is of little interest to Us. We will move on to the placement of the books.” She brought her palm up repeatedly, motioning for the hunter to stand. “Read to me the title and anything outstanding from the preface and I will decide where they are to be stored.”

The hunter approached the side of the table and gingerly opened the aged leather cover of the topmost book. Annalise seemed perfectly capable of both writing and reading with the silver helm and ribbon obstructing her sight; the hunter wondered if there was something she was trying to discover by gauging their reactions to the text.

“Optimized Mechanisms for Haze Extraction in _Saccharomyces sepulcrum_ ,” the hunter read.

“Goodness,” Annalise said flatly. “Place that upon the archive pile.”

* * *

Much of the pile was of no interest to Annalise. The hunter’s head was spinning with thoughts of dissections of the iris, maps of long-lost chalice labyrinths, and the prolific works of someone who had been incredibly adamant about the cosmic resonance of a single shifted consonant. Annalise seemed to be growing as tired of the work as the hunter was; she kept idly poking at her thumb with the quill, leaving a slowly growing spot of ink.

There was a single scrap of paper trapped between two books that immediately caught the queen’s interest. “When the red moon hangs low, the line between man and beast is blurred,” the hunter recited. “And when the Great Ones descend, a womb will be blessed with child.”

Annalise was silent. The hunter held the paper tightly and shot her a questioning glance.

“That,” she said, “is to be kept easily accessible. Place it here.”

* * *

The hunter had found yet another discourse on arachnid phylogeny when Annalise sighed. The tea had long gone cold, and the hunter had felt their shiver return; they missed their leather overcoat. All the fabric available in Elaine’s closet seemed so thin.

“We grow tired,” Annalise stated. “The remaining tomes may await their judgement a while more. Surely thy mind is now overcrowded with knowledge. Let us walk.”

When Annalise pushed her seat back and stood, the hunter noticed that beneath the pooling length of her dress, her feet were bare.

* * *

“Thy statement about being unfamiliar with the arcane,” Annalise said as she slowly walked down the hall, the intricate curves of her helm glimmering in the candlelight. “It can be unsettling for the uninitiated. Is our reading what has thee looking so upset?”

The hunter kept the same leisurely pace at her side, but they lifted a hand to their brow and paused at her statement. “I seem upset?”

“Perhaps not upset,” she replied. “Afraid.”

The hunter froze. Annalise took one step closer, and then another; the hunter could not help the single step they took in retreat.

“Thou'rt afraid,” she said, and they blinked against the oppressive iron scent that came with her approach. Annalise carried no weaponry, nor did her thin arms speak to any strength, but the hunter felt as if all their instinct had fled them.

“There is a smell,” the hunter said as they kept their breathing steady. “Like blood, and yet unlike blood. It is that which I am afraid of.”

“Why?” Annalise asked, and she was close enough that the length of her dress drifted over the hunter’s boots.

“Because I want to drink it,” they answered.

A touch traced along their neck; surely Annalise could feel the thud of their pulse against her fingertip. “There is a smell to thee, as well,” she said quietly. “Of the moon.”

A shiver shook through the hunter; Annalise drew back her hand.

“I’m also just rather cold,” the hunter admitted with a strained attempt at a laugh.

“This is a castle of many cold beds,” Annalise murmured.

“I’m sorry that the hunt has taken so many casualties,” they said quickly, as if their outpouring words would dispel the strangeness between them. “Lady Elaine told me of— well, surely you already know, you’re her Queen. It seems much the same in Yharnam— like what I told you of that priest and— and his wife—” 

“I think,” Annalise interrupted, “that I have devised a way to warm thee, and to remind us all of the glory of our hunt.”

The hunter raised their eyebrows. “...Oh?”

“A duel,” she replied. “Merely to first blood, but with enough pomp to capture the interest of all the castle. Thou shalt participate. Come along.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let vilebloods have weird vampire charisma and welcome to my lore bullshitting power hour
> 
> catch the obligatory micolash reference...
> 
> i am... very new to using theethous and the royal we so if you're in the know about that and spot glaring mistakes... pls tell
> 
> and yes, the bloody crow will be making a return next chapter
> 
> as always, thank you so much for reading and i hope you enjoyed!!!


	5. Chapter 5

“A duel?” the hunter asked, and in their astonishment they stood motionless as Annalise kept her steady walking pace.

The helm turned back over her shoulder to peer at them. “Indeed.”

They rushed to catch up with her, their boots thudding against the carpet. “Why? I mean, your majesty— did I offend you in some way?”

“Not at all. ‘Tis a reward, or the opportunity for one. Tell me, good hunter, newly baptized in blood— tell me thy name, if thou’rt capable of remembering it.”

The hunter pushed a few fingers against the bridge of their nose. “I— I cannot, you know I cannot.”

“Good.” The queen paused in front of a sturdy wooden door and turned to face them. “Then tell me if thy memory stirs at this: when thou receiv’d thine invitation, didst thou take notice? ‘Twas addressed to thee. Thy name lies plain upon the very first line.”

The hunter opened their mouth, then closed it. They stared at the expressionless helm of the queen as they visualized the letter in their mind. They had read it— aloud, even, right in front of the crow knight— and yet—

Had their name been there? They must not have noticed, it must have slid past them; even if made amnesiac, would a person startle at the simple familiarity of their own name? 

“The letter and thy name remains in Lady Elaine’s chamber with thy belongings,” Annalise said. “We are not so cruel as to take it hostage. But more of thee may be divined… if thy role is played with care.” The helm tilted. “Do consider, dear hunter, what the castle wishes to see.”

She pulled the door open to reveal a small courtyard. A fountain sat unflowing in the center, the basin splotched with wet fallen leaves. Thorny bushes around the perimeter still had a few scant red blooms tucked within the twisting growths. There were a few bulbous white flowers that the hunter had seen before, usually within the ancient labyrinthine depths of the chalices.

But the muted splendor of the dying garden did not hold their attention. The hunter stared up at the cloudy pink sky of the early dawn.

Their breath caught in their throat. They had _arrived_ at dawn. They had eaten and slept, which would easily take them into the afternoon. The library work with the queen would have taken them into the evening— 

Their senses prickled and they turned to face her, again feeling the cold recognition of gaze meeting gaze.

Her helm tilted, as if daring the hunter to say something.

“...A cloudy day, isn’t it, your majesty?” they finally said.

“Quite,” she replied. She waved a hand towards the far end of the courtyard. “An hour for thee to prepare thyself, and then thou’rt expected for the duel. Through that door lies the wing that holds Lady Elaine’s chambers. Thy typical garb shall be returned to thee. A relief, I’m sure.”

“...Quite,” the hunter echoed. 

Her hand lifted; again her touch brushed against the hunter, sliding down the slope of their neck to their shoulder. The silence between them weighed heavily; the hunter wasn’t sure if Annalise was hesitating before saying more or if she was again trying to eke some slight knowledge out of the hunter’s reaction.

The light touch turned into a grip, and then a push; the hunter was steered into the courtyard and the door was shut behind them. They stood alone and stared up at the softly glowing sky.

They had expected the queen’s touch to be cold, perhaps even preternaturally so. She had been striding about the frigid castle with bare feet and a thin dress, after all.

The hunter shook their head and fixed their gaze upon the ground as they strode to the far door.

Annalise’s touch had been warm.

* * *

The hunter could have read the invitation over and over for the full hour allotted to them. Their name, written clearly within the salutation, felt at once foreign and familiar. But Elaine and the others soon invaded the chamber and the hunter was prepared for the duel.

Their laundered clothes and repaired gear were returned to them with the exception of their pistol, lest a stray shot harm an attending noble. Even so, it was nice to have their blade back; Sofia’s work upon their weapon showed a thoroughness and attention to detail that the hunter appreciated. Even the ragged, blood-stained cloth wrapped around the handle meant to cushion the hunter’s grip had been cleaned. 

The hunter was uncomfortable with how comfortable it felt to be back in what they had worn for the long dark night. The weight of the blade, the grip of their gloves, the layers of leather and cloth, even the frayed old hat— all of them were familiar and steadying.

But the night was over, the hunt had ended, the sun had risen (it _had_ , surely, for the pinks of a sunset were much like the pinks of a sunrise), and perhaps with the help of the queen, the hunter would have some small hope of returning home.

* * *

Cainhurst had a courtyard created specifically for these sorts of events, like a coliseum in miniature. As the hunter was led through a low passageway by a gray-robed servant, they spotted dozens of levers and pulley systems attached to gates or other mechanisms the hunter could not discern. They saw one that seemed to be a system that would drain a store of oil onto a path carved into the courtyard stone to allow for fiery displays. 

The servant pulled open the doorway and the hunter peered outside. Within the courtyard there was a small, flat expanse meant for the duel; above that was luxurious seating filled with eager nobles, and above that— 

The same faintly pinkish sky, hanging over the highest seat available, where Annalise leaned against the carved wooden arm of her chair and rested the chin of her helm against her palm.

After a pause, the hunter shifted their glance to the surrounding nobles, and they gave the customary Cainhurst bow. There were cheers in return, though a few veered towards wry amusement enough to be better considered a jeer.

The hunter looked around the courtyard; they were alone in the arena. Who were they to duel? They both expected and dreaded the crow knight. It felt unfair to fight someone who had so far only given them kindness.

With the rolling creak of cogs, a gate at the opposite end of the courtyard lifted. The hunter peered into the darkness beyond. They saw a glint grow as the rising gate allowed sunlight to fall inside— perhaps a sword? Perhaps the silver armor? Perhaps—

Teeth, and upon them far too quickly; the hunter ducked to the side as a scourge beast snapped its jaws where the hunter’s head had been. Fear blotted out their thoughts but that was exactly what they needed; the terror of the hunt was a well-worn groove. Their blade snapped into shoulder sinew. The beast howled.

As the creature twisted back onto its haunches, the hunter circled around. They had fought beasts of this kind before and they were well-versed in its habits. In a moment it would lurch with claws outstretched to grab them, and the gleaming teeth would plunge into flesh— 

The hunter rolled beneath the lanky limbs just in time, their shoulders slamming against stone, and when they righted themself they threw all their remnant momentum into their arms. The blade swung up and a deep gash opened across the beast’s chest.

There was no opportunity to capitalize on the way the beast staggered in pain. The hunter heard the click of long nails on stone fast approaching. A second jaw slavered and snapped at their stomach. The hunter threw themself to the side and landed with a grunt.

The second beast, overeager, dove towards them; it was rewarded with the serrated metal scraping deep along its snout. The hunter threw the cleaver out long in order to beat the beast back further and open up the opportunity to regain their footing.

The first beast was bleeding from its wound, the blood pouring in heavy gouts as it crept towards the hunter. It was clearly weakened, but such a creature did not stop being a threat until dead. The second was far more aggressive and it snarled as it leapt forward again. The long claws tore through the air once, twice— the hunter leapt back both times, and when the beast tried again, the hunter ducked to the side and slashed the cleaver through the beast’s shoulder with such force that the arm was left hanging by a strip of ragged pelt and the off-white of the bony joint was exposed to the air.

The second beast crashed to the ground and thrashed. The hunter slammed their blade down, lifted it, and then slammed it again. Blood splashed across their eyes. A final breath gurgled out of the creature and the hunter turned as quickly as they could— 

The first beast fell upon them.

They shoved one hand against the beast’s throat and held back the sharp jaws; the beast, weakened as it was, was still biting. A clawed hand gripped at the hunter’s cowl and tore at the leather. There wasn’t enough space between them both for the hunter to swing the cleaver; instead, they shoved their hand into the same wound they had cut open on the beast’s chest before. They scrabbled at the wet viscera, digging past fur and muscle, parting flesh until they could take a slippery grip of the ribcage— 

With a heaving pull, something cracked. Hot blood spattered against the hunter and the beast slumped against them, dead.

Beyond the pound of their pulse in their ears, the hunter could hear the nobles laughing and cheering.

The beast’s head lolled as the hunter shoved the bulk of the body off to the side. A few gray-robed servants scurried out with pails of sloshing water to tidy the gory mess and the hunter was herded back into the adjoining passageway. They were offered water and a seat; they gripped the back of the chair as they stood and they did not drink.

Annalise was already within the dim corridor, for of course she was; she stood barefoot on the frigid stone floor and watched as the hunter dug their nails into the wood.

“You said... a _duel_.” They took a deep breath. “Your majesty.”

“We did,” she replied. “This was the aperitif.”

The hunter kept their breathing steady. _Consider what the castle wants to see_. The nobles seemed elated at the hunter’s butchering of the beasts; the hunter had seen Elaine and the others watching with rapt interest. _What did the castle want to see?_

The return of its hunters, safe, after the long and inescapable night. The hunter surely had played their role well. The beasts were dead, and they were safe.

But why, then, was this merely the precursor to something else?

Their thoughts were interrupted by someone tapping at their shoulder. They turned and gave a questioning look to a rather red-faced Elaine.

“It would be a shame for you to go in bare,” she said, and she shoved a ribbon into the hunter’s hands. “But if anyone asks, it wasn’t from me. Really. It’s Alanna’s ribbon. I borrowed it.”

They held the ribbon and frowned. With a huff, Elaine snatched it back, then yanked at the hunter’s arm until they held up their blade. She wrapped the ribbon along the handle and pulled it tight.

“There,” she said as she took a step back and nodded. “One token to your name. You won’t look so sad like this.”

“...Thank you,” the hunter said.

“ _Please_ do not mention it,” Elaine hissed, and as the hunter peered down at the fluttering ribbon she briskly walked off to return to her seat.

* * *

The gate lifted and the hunter walked back into the arena, a fearful caution prickling up their neck with every step. They glanced left, then right; the two butchered beasts had been mounted upon the surrounding stone walls. Someone had flayed them further: the belly was torn wide and the pelt parted like curtains to reveal glistening guts that were still dripping down onto the floor.

The artist responsible was within the arena. The hunter fixed their gaze upon the crow knight, whose sword was tasseled with dozens of ribbons.

The crow knight turned to face them. The hunter took a deep breath. There was the heavy stench of beast blood in the air; past that, there was that faint iron sting that came from the crow knight, the same scent shared with the queen. But beyond that, so warm and familiar…

There was a faint trickling sound. The hunter looked down at the carved-out ruts in the stone floor. They had seen one system set up for filling the arena with dramatically burning swathes of oil. But now— the hunter hated that they were _salivating_ at the sight of healing blood filling the shallow carvings on the floor. The scent was dizzying.

The crow knight bowed low. The nobles cheered. The hunter struggled to think.

The crow had brought back Byrgenwerth books for the queen— it stood to reason that a supply of blood vials could have been brought back, as well. But why spill them in this way?

To see if the hunter could keep their head when surrounded by it? Perhaps— but there had to be something more. _If thy role is played with care..._

The hunter returned the bow, though their outstretched hand was clearly shaking.

What was their role? They were a hunter, they hunted beasts. What was the crow knight’s role?

The feathered cloak fluttered. The hunter remembered the yellow-garbed hunter stalking the grounds where the priest and his wife had died, mad with grief— and Eileen, flitting between the arcs of his throwing knives and slicing at his chest. The hunter had helped. 

The crows hunted hunters. And for the nobles to be watching with such enthusiasm— they did not want the quick and overwhelming mercy that Eileen and the hunter had granted Henryk. They wanted a show. They wanted the triumph of their raven-cloaked knight over the ravenously blood-drunk.

The crow knight took a step; the hunter matched it. The two circled, equidistant, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

Enough of the playacting, the hunter thought; what of value could the _queen_ learn from this exchange? The crow had seen the hunter fight dozens of times, though it had predominantly been against beasts; the knight had not seen them fight other people of equal prowess such as the lone scholar of the college, perhaps due to lack of vantage points. The hunter knew that the crow had informed the queen of all of this already; this fight would be an opportunity to see how well the hunter dealt with a skilled human opponent.

But to do so also opened up the opportunity for the hunter to learn how the crow knight fought. This was to the queen’s disadvantage; if the hunter was to turn on their hosts for whatever reason, they would have experience in fighting their finest.

However, the experience would be limited, they realized; a gun was an integral part of the hunter’s arsenal and its absence wholly altered the rhythm of a fight. Neither the crow nor the hunter currently had their firearms. This would be a battle fought solely by blades.

So, it was a tentative prodding in both directions, a delicate and dangerous reveal: both participants in the duel would earn a sense of the other’s ability without being able to completely dissect their habits.

The ribbons fluttered. The crow knight lunged forward and the blade arced up; the slice whistled through the air as the hunter sidestepped. The crow knight followed through with the swing and the sword cut out to the side, chasing after the hunter’s back, but the hunter kept enough speed that the tip merely whiffed past their coat.

The watchful circling resumed. After one rotation, the crow knight’s head cocked to the side; instead of continuing the circle, the crow’s steps cut forward, taking steady strides straight towards the hunter.

The hunter brought the cleaver down in a long overhead swing; it was a powerful move that chipped the stone floor with its strength, but it gave the crow ample time to step out of the way. The hunter heaved their blade back and ducked away from one slash, then another—and the third resounded with a loud metallic _clang_ as the razor-sharp sword glanced against the folded cleaver. The sword caught on the serrated edge and the crow was yanked along with it when the hunter wrenched their arm to the side.

The hunter turned to give at least a glancing blow to the crow’s back—

The hunter felt a flare of instinct and they dropped unceremoniously to their knees. As their shins crashed against the stone, the sword slashed at the air above their head. The crow knight had recovered from the stumble with astounding fluidity; the sword might be easily caught by the cleaver but the crow had clearly accounted for such a maneuver. How many other hunters before had tried to do the same? How many other hunters had backed away on hands and knees, just as the hunter was doing now, as the crow approached with long, confident strides?

How many other hunters had died at the end of that ribbon-laden blade?

The nobles wanted to see the hunter’s defeat; the hunter wasn’t willing to give it just yet. They scrambled to their feet and simply _ran_ , outpacing the next slash at their side. Their boots stomped through the blood-filled channel and left a red trail on the stone.

The crow knight stood in one spot and pivoted on a heel to face them. The pale sunlight glinted off the silver helm. The hunter caught their breath as they pressed their back against the stone wall of the arena. The air reeked; they were standing right beside the eviscerated beast.

The hunter let out a low sound of exertion as they pushed off the wall and charged at the knight.

They had expected a jab with the sword, or a slice at their side accompanying a sidestep as the crow dodged the hunter’s advance; the hunter did not expect a strong arm thrown out to crash against their windpipe. They choked and clutched at their throat as they fell. The crow knight shifted the grip of the sword—

Ah! There was hesitation there, and in that small faltering the opportunity to attack the hunter was lost. The crow knight had motioned as if to sheathe the sword, but stopped—there was something to it, the hunter was sure, some hidden aspect of the blade that the crow did not yet want the hunter to know. The hunter had just enough time to roll to the side and regain their footing.

Or, they would have; their foot slid against the shallow blood and they had to throw their palm against the stone floor to keep from falling completely flat. A boot crashed into the hunter’s side and a pained cry tore out of them. Another blow followed and they gasped for air. The duel was to be fought to first blood, not first bruise, they thought, as the crow pressed a knee into the small of the hunter’s back and wound gauntleted fingers into their hair. Their head was yanked back until their neck twinged with a dangerous strain.

Then, just as harshly, the hunter’s head was shoved to the ground. The blood in the shallow channel filled their nose and their forehead slammed against stone. The hunter’s vision popped with stars.

They were loosely cognizant of the cleaver being pried from their fingers. A strong hand pulled them onto their side. Their head lolled in the blood; they wanted to drink it. It would be easy to drink it, and then the pain in their head would go away, and—

 _First blood_. The crow was pinning the hunter to the ground, the nobles were raucous with delight, and the sharp edge of the sword was primed to slice their belly open and make them match the hanging beasts. 

It _would_ be first blood, they thought with surging panic; Annalise had never specified the severity. Would that be what amused such a queen, entreating the hunter to participate in their own execution for the entertainment of her subjects? Had the promise of uncovering the hunter’s past been just as false as the pale pink dawn?

The blade pierced through leather and cloth and skin and the hunter gasped at the searing trail of pain— they could escape with this, they thought wildly— let the damned crow kill them, and surely they would see the Dream. They would return to a familiar lantern, and Castle Cainhurst would be no more than a strange and painful memory.

The silver helm dipped low and drew close. Beyond the celebration of the nobles, the hunter could just barely hear the low, rasping voice whispering into their ear.

“Drink,” the crow said, and the blade pulled free of their gut.

The hunter gulped at the blood on the ground. Just as they had swallowed enough to make the pain faintly relent, the crow knight grasped them by the collar and dragged them back to the dim peripheral corridors of the arena.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> next chapter: some tlc with the bloody crow...


	6. Chapter 6

The hunter’s shirt was tight around their neck and the seams of their overcoat pulled harshly at their underarms as the crow dragged them over the floor of the passageway. They were limp and their head was still hazy from the impact against stone. While the slice across their belly had been mended with the cold and coagulating healing blood the hunter had consumed right off the ground, there was still an ache, sore and deep, acting as an echo of the sword inside them.

The crow let go of the hunter, then bent down; two strong arms hooked under the hunter’s shoulders and they were lifted into a chair. The hunter slumped against the tall backrest and the wood creaked. They breathed in, then out. Their head pounded.

The crow lifted a hand, as if to take the hunter’s frayed hat and set it aside, but the hunter caught the gauntlet at the wrist.

The silver helm tilted. The hunter glared.

The crow knight had just gutted them— had _delighted_ in gutting them, performing for the crowd of nobles, playing— 

_If thy role is played with care_...

That hesitation with the sword, the abruptly abandoned motion— if the crow had followed through with it, what would have happened? Had the crow stopped for fear of the hunter understanding what the sword could do, or had it been out of fear for what the sword would do to the hunter?

And that singular whispered command to _drink_ , the only word the hunter had ever heard the crow utter— why? The entertaining humiliation of the hunter lapping at puddles to survive, or…

The crow knight was as beholden to expectations as the hunter was. A role was played, but a bit of careful stagecraft had been performed; the crow had killed the hunter without killing them.

The hunter sighed and their grip slid down until the crow’s hand was clasped beneath their own. They squeezed once, gently, before dropping their hand down to their lap. 

The crow stood still for a long while, with one hand held in the air right where the hunter had let go of it; then, a slow return to motion. The crow took the hunter’s hat and hung it off a carved spire of the chair’s backrest.

The hunter watched with muted surprise as the crow drew back and swept one hand over the other. A thin leather strap was undone and the cuffs of the gauntlets were pulled down from the vambraces. The crow had long, thin hands, elegant in movement and yet still belying some undercurrent of brutality— there were scattered streaks of scars and the nail of the ring finger was torn, with the surrounding creases of the nailbed stained dark with blood. The hunter could see the blue of the crow’s veins stark against ghostly pale skin, and with the sight came the scent, the awful iron sting that the hunter wanted to drown in.

The crow brushed a palm along the hunter’s head, the touch delicately drifting over the spot that had been slammed so harshly against stone, and despite the care the crow was displaying, the hunter couldn’t help but wince.

The touch trailed lower. The blood smeared across the hunter’s face was growing tacky as it dried and when the crow tapped a fingertip against their cheek they could feel it faintly stick. The crow made a low, quiet sound; a huff of amusement, perhaps— the handkerchief would do nothing to help this mess, the hunter thought. 

They thought of the warmth of a bath, if that was a luxury that could still be afforded to them. They thought of the clashing scents of Elaine’s extensive collection of oils and soaps. They thought of the soft comfort of the vastly oversized robe. The hunter thought of such mundane things with growing desperation because between the closeness of the crow and the sickening smell of blood it was growing very difficult to think at all.

The crow dropped their hand to pull at the hunter’s overcoat. Part of the leather had been sliced apart, as had the shirt beneath. Everything was slicked red from the first fight with the beasts, the shallow channel on the floor, or the hunter’s own innards, all of them messily intermixed and smearing onto the crow’s pale hands.

The crow knelt, pulled the cloth apart, and assessed the damage. There was an angry red line arcing across the hunter’s abdomen. The crow traced a finger along the slice in a slow, almost reverent way.

The hunter shuddered. _Is this sympathy? Or are you admiring your own handiwork_?

The helm tilted up, as if the crow was now staring at them.

The hunter stared back. The crow’s nails pressed tiny crescents against the long red line. There was panic now, slow, as if bubbling up through congealed sludge. 

_I wish to drink of you until I am sick_ , the hunter thought _, and you wish to tear me open again._

“Well done,” Annalise said, and the hunter felt as if they should have startled, but all they could do was slowly turn their head to look at where she stood. The crow remained kneeling with one hand pressed to the hunter’s stomach.

“I take it,” the hunter said, “that I played my role well.”

“Indeed,” Annalise replied. “And not all that play the part are kept as preciously as thee.”

“Your subjects were all cheering for my death. Am I to greet them again after this and pretend as if nothing happened?”

“As if nothing happened,” Annalise echoed slowly, considering every syllable. “Thou wouldst be wise to do so. Besides— thou’rt a hunter of the Dream, art thou not?”

There was a slight increase in pressure from the fingers on their stomach. The hunter glanced at the crow before taking a deep breath and looking back at the queen. “That I am,” they answered. “This one followed me for long enough to surmise that, surely. It also seems that most can smell it on me.” They paused. “You said I smelled like the moon.”

“Thou'rt beholden to the moon,” Annalise replied. “In bondage to it.”

The hunter fell silent.

“It pulls thee,” she continued. “As strongly as it pulls the sea, it pulls thee, and the world is carved by thy movement. Thou’rt but a tool in a greater hand.”

The hunter stared at her.

“To what ends thou’rt being used… ‘tis beyond thy ken. Beyond perhaps even what I may divine. But tell Us, truthfully— thou’rt not blind to it. Is the pull felt?”

The hunter nodded slowly. There had been nudges, things that locals had said, things that Gehrman had said, guiding them through Yharnam, but above all that, subtle yet inescapable, was the call of the hunt, the silver living thrum of the night. 

“Then why,” she asked, and she leaned in close, close enough that the hunter could feel her warmth, and that _scent_ , that vile iron scent— “Why, good hunter, didst thou not slay the spider?”

The hunter said nothing. The crow dragged a thumb across the welt left by the mostly-healed wound and the hunter twitched.

“She was all alone,” the hunter finally said, “and— and doing no harm to anyone. I could feel the pull, and I know she held back some terrible secret like— like a levee holding back a flood, and to kill her would let the truth come surging back in. I know that I was meant to kill the spider. But I didn’t.” 

“If killing the spider would end the long dark night,” Annalise asked, “wouldst thou do it then?”

“The night is over,” the hunter said, and the wavering in their voice made it obvious that they were loath to leave the lie even after it had been named.

“The night,” Annalise said, “is still young.”

The hunter closed their eyes and sighed. “Why?” they asked.

“Why what?” Annalise replied.

“All of this,” they murmured. “Any of this. The duel, the dawn— why?”

The queen drew back and paced, slowly, to circle the chair. “What of the people in Yharnam, those under the auspices of the Church? How were they faring? Has the night been _kind_ to them?”

The hunter remembered the cramped and twisting streets beneath the Cathedral Ward, the shacks of Hemwick, and the collapsing homesteads deep within the woods, and upon knocking on any door they could hear the mounting fear, or fearsome joy, or, in some cases, no more than wordless howling. “No,” the hunter admitted.

“Then thou’rt capable of understanding _why_ ,” she continued. “We have varnished the sky with sanity— and if not sanity, normalcy. The castle is sustained by the dawn.” She paused and draped a hand over the hunter’s shoulder. “As are the people. And the people here have habits: food and frivolity. We thank thee for playing participant in both.”

Her touch withdrew and the helm tilted slightly; the crow’s hand slid down, away from the wound, until the palm was merely resting upon the hunter’s knee. “To play a role, however, is quite different from reality,” Annalise said. “We hope to delve into the reality of thine allegiances, dear hunter, and soon. But thou’rt deserving of respite, and We did promise thee further knowledge of thy past.”

The crow knight stood. Annalise held up a hand; between thumb and index finger, she held a small glass vial of blood. She held it out and the crow took it with a deep bow of the head as thanks.

“Meet Us in Our chambers when thou’rt prepared to delve deeper,” Annalise said. “In the interim, slake thy thirst. Choose, though— the devil thou know’st, or the one thou’rt desperate to be acquainted with.”

The hunter could see peripherally that the queen was walking away; looming close over them, however, was the crow. One hand brought the vial of blood close to the hunter’s mouth, while the other reached out to cup the back of their head.

The hunter grasped at the crow’s forearm. The helm tilted. The hunter dug their fingers in, a firm and guiding pressure, not harsh enough to hurt, and they pulled the delicate skin of the crow’s wrist to their lips.

The hand at the back of their head gripped at their hair. The vial dropped and splattered its contents over the other bloodstains already coating their lap. The crow’s wrist pressed eagerly at the sharp edges of the hunter’s teeth.

Healing blood brought a sense of effusive warmth, like a spark that spread out and soothed; the crow’s blood felt like fire, as if the hunter was being consumed _by_ consuming it. They held the crow’s wrist tightly and planted their lips firm against the bitten incision. Was it healing them? The hunter could hardly tell. For the moment, the world was no more than the bleeding pulse beneath their teeth and the surrounding smell of iron. 

They were faintly cognizant of the fingertips gently dragging along the nape of their neck, petting them. The wrist pulled back and the hunter clutched at it for a moment before regaining some semblance of control. They dropped their hands to instead grip at the arms of the chair as they caught their breath.

The crow wrapped the bitten wrist with a long length of clean cloth. Once it was fastened, the crow traced a touch over the hunter’s hands before grasping them and guiding them up from the chair.

The hunter wavered, dizzy with the remnant feverish heat of the blood; when it looked as if they could faint, the crow slung the hunter’s arm over a shoulder and supported them. The crow led them a step forward, then paused; with a twist and a reach the hunter’s hat was retrieved from the chair and set carefully atop their head.

The hunter huffed with faint amusement and let their bloodied cheek rest against the crow’s shoulder. With each attentive step, the crow guided the hunter deeper into the castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always thank you for reading and i hope you enjoyed! <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ❗❗❗❗
> 
> this chapter is NSFW and contains no plot. so, if you're here just for the story, please feel free to skip this chapter without worry and we'll be back to the mystery next time. but if you do wish to view some TLC with the bloody crow, then read on.
> 
> ❗❗❗❗

(❗❗❗ secondary disclaimer for those that Do want the nsfw: there's D/s elements, bondage, consensual choking, a hint of peril mostly because the hunter overthinks things, and uhhh butt stuff. enjoy!)

* * *

  
The crow supported the hunter as they walked, holding them steady at the shoulders. The chill of the air only intensified as they both pressed deeper into the castle; the hunter saw the swirling vapor of their breath when they exhaled. A shame about their leathers being damaged right after being repaired, they thought as they glanced down at the slash cut through their overcoat. Beneath the tear, part of their abdomen was bared to the frigid air. But inside of them was the same burning heat they had drunk from the crow’s wrist, warding back the cold, and so they found that they didn’t mind the exposure.

The crow pushed a door open and brought the hunter into the richly carpeted length of the living quarters hallway. The hunter faintly hoped that they weren’t trudging blood onto the carpet. Then again, it was all a plush crimson. Perhaps the stains would blend right in.

They had assumed that they would have a bath before presenting themself to the queen once more— and they had assumed correctly. The next door the crow opened revealed a steaming bath and a wide array of toiletries. A narrow stained glass window only let in a modicum of color-warped light; all else was illuminated by a candelabra set upon a carved plinth by the tub.

The hunter smiled blearily and leaned into the crow’s side. “Are we to part again? Or are you going to scrub me clean?”

The crow pulled them into the room. The door swung shut behind them. The hunter heard the turning _thunk_ of the lock.

Pale hands tugged at their overcoat. The hunter shrugged it off their shoulders, let the leather fall to the floor in a heap, and then shivered when the crow slid a fingertip along the back of their bloodstained undershirt, the nail pressing against the skin beneath. Once the hunter had pulled that remnant fabric off, the crow drew close, the edges of the feathered cloak brushing against the hunter’s bare skin. The hunter leaned back against the firm strength of the crow’s chest and watched as the pale hands explored, first resting lightly against the hint of their pulse above their collarbone, then sliding down their chest— lingering where cold air and warm touch made the hunter’s breath falter, a thumb dragging slowly over their nipple. The hunter let their head loll back against the crow’s shoulder; the crow’s intricate silver helm tucked down close against their neck. 

The hands dropped lower, one palming at the upper curve of the hunter’s hip, and the other tracing a touch along the faded line of their evisceration. A shudder arched the hunter's back. The crow wrapped one arm around their midriff and held them tight.

The crow’s hips pressed against the hunter’s rear as one hand deftly unclasped their belt and plucked at the dull metal button of their pants. Their trousers were then left loosely open; the crow’s hands trailed back up, flitting lightly, teasingly, until the fingertips brushed against the hunter’s cloth face mask, pressing at their lips. The hunter could smell the seeping scent of blood beneath the bandage wrapped around the crow’s wrist. They inhaled sharply. The thought of the same wrist pressed so eagerly to their teeth made them dizzy, but they needn’t take the same bite twice— what they wouldn’t give for a taste of the other wrist, or the curve of the neck, or the tender muscle of the inner thigh—

Their mask was yanked down. The hunter made a quiet, inquisitive sound as the crow pulled it back up and bunched the fabric until it was a thick bundle wound across the hunter’s open mouth. The simple knot at the back of the cloth was quickly re-tied and tightened. _A gag_ , the hunter thought with a sort of distant, fuzzy panic. Their pulse quickened.

And the belt the crow had just pulled free from the hunter’s trousers— a firm grip held back one wrist, then another, and then both of the hunter’s hands were lashed tightly together with the remnant length of the belt hanging down between them. The crow took one stride back and tugged at it. 

The hunter stepped back in response: slowly, carefully, and obediently.

The hunter’s hat was gently removed. The crow’s hand swept over their hair in brief praise before pushing on their head and giving a pointed downward pull of the belt. The hunter lowered to their knees.

The belt went slack. The hunter received another pat to the head. _I am a mad dog muzzled and leashed,_ the hunter thought, and their jaw strained against the gag. _Not another bite for me._

The crow retrieved a thick and luxurious towel from the shelf, folded it over upon itself a few times, and then draped it over the side of the porcelain bath. As the crow wound fingers into the hunter’s hair and pulled, they were guided forward to bend themself over the hard lip of the tub cushioned by the folded towel. Their face drew close to the steaming water. It would be easy for the crow to keep pushing until the hunter’s head was submerged and then hold them there. The hunter strained their wrists with instinctive resistance. The edges of the belt dug into their skin. 

But the crow made no move to drown them, and so the hunter focused until their breathing was no longer panicked panting behind the gag.

The crow dipped a hand past them and swished a washcloth through the steaming water. The cloth lifted and trickled onto the hunter’s back. The water was pleasantly hot, but as it trailed down their skin in thin rivulets it rapidly cooled. The frigid air of the chamber prickled at their wet skin.

The cloth softly dragged against their back, trailing between their shoulder blades and along the sloping curve of their spine. The hunter’s bound wrists had settled near the small of their back; the crow pressed the rag into one straining hand and made the hunter hold it as attention was turned to pushing down the hunter’s trousers. The hunter shifted their weight to assist in pulling the sturdy fabric further. The hunter’s shoes were set carefully to the side; once they were removed, the crow took the time to fold the pants and undergarments in a neat pile beside the blood-spattered boots.

There was a low huff of air; the room grew substantially darker. The crow must have blown out all but one of the candles upon the plinth.

The hunter heard the faint metallic sounds of armor being removed. They were desperate to turn back and look, but with their angled position over the tub and the dimness of the room, they couldn’t see very much behind them no matter how they craned their neck.

The washcloth was pulled from the hunter’s grip and dipped back into the tub. Warm water poured over their rear as the crow wrung the rag just above the small of their back. The water ran in rivulets down their thighs. One hand clutched at their ass and roughly kneaded the soft flesh; the hunter squirmed and made a muffled sound of surprise. 

Their legs were nudged further apart and the hunter complied. The rag, soaked once more with steaming water, swept between the hunter’s legs.

The hunter shivered. The air in the room was cold and they were so exposed— the remnant heat of the crow’s blood could only comfort them to an extent. The crow had pulled the warm rag away and the water left on the hunter’s skin was leaching their body heat away to the air.

The hunter jolted. The crow gripped their ass tightly enough to make nails sharp against skin, and a mouth, wet and hot and eager, lapped against them. Long-burning arousal flared and they panted against the gag. As much as they wanted to squirm, if they shifted their careful balance they would knock the air out of themself upon the hard rim of the tub, even with the towel cushioning them. They instinctively wanted to throw their hands out and support themself, but both were securely bound behind their back.

Still, it was easy to relax into the sensation, to turn their focus entirely upon the insistent press of the crow’s tongue. The hunter made frequent sounds of approval, muffled as they were behind the bunched-up cloth. Their fingers twitched uselessly when the crow circled tight muscle, easing them open.

The crow pulled back. After a pause, a finger slicked with saliva slid into the hunter with little resistance.

The hunter huffed in a deep breath and then had it immediately pushed out of them. They had shifted a little too far forward against the tub in their enjoyment and now the rim jutted against their stomach. The finger inside them twisted and heat flared but it was hard to do more than struggle to take in shallow breaths that hissed against the cloth of the gag. The crow took notice of their distress and pulled up on the belt, which wrenched at their shoulders and lifted them. The hunter settled their weight onto their shins and leaned back and away from the tub.

The belt around their hands was undone and the hunter made an embarrassed sound of protest— there was color blooming on their face as they tried to insist via _mmph_ s that they were fine with it being there, really— but then the strip of leather was fed through the buckle and looped around their neck in a makeshift leash; not tight enough to choke, but the crow could certainly choose to do so.

A hand settled between their shoulder blades and the belt was held slack until the hunter nodded. The belt was tugged to the side, bringing the hunter parallel to the bath, and then down, guiding them to their hands and knees. The crow patted the hunter’s back once before dragging nails down their spine, hard enough to scratch— there would be matching rows of red, the hunter thought, like another signature left upon their body, marking the new depth of the hunter that the crow could claim to have touched.

A finger crooked back inside them and the hunter made a low, drawn-out sound. A second soon joined and they rocked back against the sensation. The crow’s grip on the belt tightened just enough to remind the hunter of the pressure around their neck.

The fingers stretched them wide. There was the sound of a stopper being pulled from glass and something warm poured over their hole, slippery and thick. The fingers plunged into them a few more times to spread the oil. Then, the fingers slipped out of them, leaving a needy emptiness that was soon addressed. The hunter moaned as the crow’s cock pushed inside them so slowly that it ached. Just as it seemed close to brushing up against where the hunter needed it most, the crow drew back, maintaining the tortuously gentle pace.

A bit of spit dribbled past the gag and the hunter realized that they were drooling. They made a softly plaintive sound and shifted their weight back in an attempt to bring the crow’s hips flush against their rear.

The belt tightened. The hunter had to arch their neck back and take short, frantic breaths through their nose. With the message made clear, the grip relented, and the hunter kept very still. The crow did as they had desired, though; the crow hilted fully inside the hunter and then remained there to watch them struggle not to squirm.

There was so much heat within them and they were balanced on the precipice of satisfaction but the crow kept them on a tight leash in more ways than one. The hunter wasn’t sure what the crow was feeling, but every time the rhythm picked up and the crow rocked into them and the heat built and built and built until it _stopped_ , it all _stopped_ , with the crow barely even in them and one hand rubbing gentle circles at the small of their back— the hunter was shivering with need. But they couldn’t seek out the sensation for themself, couldn’t lean back and draw the crow in deep, or else the belt would tighten. All they could do was curse and moan behind the gag.

There was another round of quick pounding, of hips smacking into their rear, and the hunter felt just a single touch away— but the crow stopped again. They groaned. Fingers pulled at the tie of the gag and the crow loomed close, leaning forward to press heavily against the hunter’s back.

“Beg,” said that low and rasping voice, and the crow’s mouth brushed against the hunter’s ear.

“Please,” they gasped as soon as the gag dropped from their lips. “Please, just fuck me, _use_ me— s-surely you want to come as badly as I—” 

Their breath was trapped in their throat. The crow had returned to a steady pace, but the belt around their neck had also tightened. “Ser Knight, please,” they said as they arched their head back, the title the best respect they could manage— and again they were reminded of how _little_ they knew of the person currently slamming into them. “Fuck, _please_ , I cannot bear it, _mercy—_ ”

The belt wound tighter and the hunter choked, but the crow had _finally_ reached a rhythm that had the hunter reeling. They gasped down a strangled breath. The heat inside them reached a peak and their arms nearly gave out as they shuddered. They closed their eyes and let the satisfaction flare within them.

They were barely cognizant of the crow’s movement growing irregular, of a similar shudder passing through the thighs, and only when the crow thrust deep inside them and clawed at their back with both hands did the tightness of the belt relent. The hunter dropped to rest upon their elbows and clutched at their neck as they gulped down air.

The crow pulled out of them. Shakily, the hunter drew their knees beneath them and sat up. They felt exhausted— and the _bath,_ they realized, they still needed to _bathe_ and the water had surely gone cold by now— _and the queen was waiting for them—_

Then again, she was clearly perceptive, and the last she had likely seen of the hunter was them desperately drinking from the crow’s wrist. Had this, too, been expected of them?

The belt was pulled free of their neck. They looked back and saw in the dim light the crow, re-helmed and dressed as if not a damned thing had happened, offering the hunter a hand. 

The hunter took it and stood on wobbly legs. The crow encouraged them to the bath; the hunter dipped a hand in. It was lukewarm; not as hot as they would have preferred, but not unbearably cold. The water prickled against the stinging scratches on their back and the hunter winced, but other than that, relaxing into the bath and relishing in the remnant afterglow felt wonderful.

A hand drifted over their hair, then down to cup their cheek; the hunter glanced up at the crow before leaning into the touch.

After brushing a thumb across their cheek, the crow drew back; the hunter was then handed a fresh washcloth. The hunter made an amused huff of thanks as they took it and got to work at scrubbing the long-dried blood from their face. After one last lingering touch to their shoulder, the crow left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GRRM uses Ser a lot and i was wondering if it was a GOT only thing but nope, cases for it being used in the place of sire in some middle english, and then also in dutch and (sort of) in Italian! So I’m usin’ it for gender neutral honorific. Because I can.
> 
> Boy this chapter got away from me and also much of it is content that i’ve never really tried my hand at before so, enjoy?
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading + commenting + etc :D


	8. Chapter 8

The hunter felt far more relaxed (and clean) after their time in the bath but they were now left with a logistical problem. Their hunting garb was torn and slathered in blood. There was not a change of clothes within the chamber and they had last seen the large robe draped over the chair of Elaine’s mirrored vanity. Elaine’s quarters were nearby; the hunter could bundle up in one of the large, fluffy towels and raid her wardrobe once more for clothing. It would be awkward and they would have to contend with the frigid air of the hall but it would have to do. The hunter only hoped that no one would be in the hallway to see them in such a state.

They left the lukewarm water of the bath, dried off, and began tucking the towel around themself as a robe. Shock jolted up their spine and they nearly dropped the towel when the door to the bathing chamber slammed open.

“Oh, are you quite done?” Elaine asked, and she bustled into the room with an armful of fabric. “I needed to see you to decide between the gray or the blue.” She set some of the clothes aside and held up a ruffled blouse. “Goodness, yes, certainly the gray. I just don’t _know_ what Irene was going on about with the blue.”

The hunter pressed their lips in a thin line. “Do you happen to have anything… of a thicker cloth, perhaps?”

Elaine repeated the question to herself in a whisper as she squinted at the shirt. “Of a _thicker_ cloth. What is it that you want? _Canvas?_ ”

“It’s freezing,” the hunter said.

“You’ve only just gotten out of the bath is all,” Elaine said, and she shoved the shirt into the hunter’s arms. “Wear this. You’ll look splendid.” 

* * *

Once dressed, the hunter followed Elaine into the hallway. She walked briskly and grasped at the hunter’s sleeve to ensure that they kept her pace.

“You’re to meet with the queen, yes? That’s why I had to make sure you looked your best,” she said as she patted the hunter’s elbow. “Your hair is still quite a mess, but I suppose that’s fetching in its own way.”

“You sit near the queen at the banquet,” the hunter said. “Are you two close?”

“Close to her?” Elaine said. “Family, we are. Distant, yes, but our blood once flowed from the same font.” She sighed; it sounded a bit rapturous. “Now, though…” Her gaze seemed glazed and distant. The corners of her mouth twitched. She glanced at the hunter and the distraction passed. “Ah, well. If you must know— the queen’s mother, Calista, had fifty siblings.”

The hunter balked. “Fifty?”

“Perhaps more,” Elaine said with a shrug. “The king of the time had many wives. And as you may imagine, with fifty siblings comes many nieces and nephews and so on. So, while many may claim shared heritage with the queen, I know for a fact that at the very least our forebears came from the same mother. My lineage is that of Dia, sister to Calista, daughter of Cyllene and Lycaon.” She leaned in to whisper conspiratorially. “And if it is to be believed— Cyllene was not quite of human ken.” She paused. “‘Tis why I have such high cheekbones, you know.”

The hunter furrowed their brows. “What do you mean?”

Elaine turned a corner and began ascending a winding stone staircase. “Well— that is history well before my time, really— but it was King Lycaon that led his knights into the depths of the earth in search of glory. He lost all his knights, but he returned with another wife.” She fell silent, winded by speaking while climbing the steep stairs. She brushed back a few stray hairs that stuck to her sweaty forehead. When she spoke again, she was still slightly out of breath. “And to be called _vile_ — the Church may lob such a title at us like dung for daring to drink what they may not— but as long-time collectors of misfortune—” 

“Lady Elaine,” Annalise stated. Elaine’s head snapped to look up the stairwell; Annalise stood at the upper threshold. Elaine curtseyed as deeply as she could within the confines of the stairs. The hunter bowed their head in recognition.

“If thou’rt to lecture so, the good hunter and I shall have naught left to speak of,” Annalise said, her tone lightly chastising.

Elaine nodded so fervently that the hair she had pushed back shook forward and stuck to her forehead again. “Yes, your majesty. Of course, your majesty.”

“Thou mayst let the hunter decorate thine arm at a later time,” Annalise said. “For now, We have need of them.”

Elaine nodded again and urged the hunter forward. They sidled carefully around her and glanced up at the queen as they finished ascending the staircase. Behind them, they heard Elaine hurrying her way back down.

“An excitable one, she is,” Annalise said as the hunter entered the hall. “She has taken good care of thee?”

“I do think she wishes that I was instead some sort of lapdog,” the hunter said. “But yes, she’s attentive. I greatly appreciate her hospitality— as do I yours.”

“And the crow,” Annalise said. “Still, thou’rt treated well?”

The hunter faltered— and in faltering, they were sure that they had given her the answer she was looking for, if she did not know it already.

“Yes,” they finally said. 

The helm tilted. “Good.”

The hunter cleared their throat. “We are to discuss more of my past,” the hunter said. 

She began her customary slow pace down the hall; the hunter followed. “Indeed. Though it seems thou’rt interested in Our past, as well.”

“I know very little of this land on account of being an amnesiac,” the hunter said with a slight shrug. “What little I’ve been able to glean of Yharnam’s past may as well be a full library compared to what I really know of Cainhurst.”

“Then we shall delve deep, indeed,” Annalise replied. As they rounded the next corner, the flickering torches on the walls illuminated a great wooden door that was opened to the outside. The hunter realized that it led to the tall stone path that arced across the entrance courtyard and connected to the highest part of the central keep.

The hunter stared up at the false dawn and frowned.

“I am glad thou’rt not overly fatigued from the day’s exertions,” Annalise said as she walked outside. “We have higher yet to ascend. Tell me, good hunter— which topic enthralls thee more? Thy past, or mine?”

They chewed on their lip. It would be polite to answer that her royal lineage fascinated them more, but they considered Annalise insightful enough to not value such simple flattery. “My past,” they said honestly.

“Then we shall begin with the bad news,” she replied. “Thou’rt from a small village eradicated by a plague— not that of beasts, but of unclean waters. Thou’rt the sole survivor, though once, thou hadst been just as sick as thy fellows. When all around thee were dead, thou availed thyself of the fortunes of the deceased and so purchased passage to Yharnam. Thou arriv'd in the city crouched upon the doorstep of death. If thou hadst taken even an hour longer to do so, thou wouldst not be speaking to me now.”

The hunter stopped walking. Annalise turned to face them. Cold prickled up the back of their neck and they stared at her.

“There is no home for thee to return to,” Annalise said. “I am sorry.”

The hunter clenched their hands into fists, then loosened them to press their fingers flat against their thighs as they leaned forward. They took a deep breath. “No need to apologize. It’s not your fault,” they managed to say. “I should have expected that, really.”

“If there is any detail that may be a comfort to thee, thou needst only ask,” Annalise said.

“A family,” the hunter said. “Parents, siblings— anything. What were their names?”

She said them, slowly, with attention given to each title and with time between for the hunter to truly hear them.

The hunter sighed, approached the stone wall edge of the bridge, and leaned against it. They peered down into the courtyard below with a blank expression. The wind whipping by at their height made them blink, but no tears fell. “My own name was so familiar as to spur no reaction in me when I saw it,” they said. “And to hear these ones now— again, they are familiar, but they do not—” the hunter bit back their own words as they dug their fingertips against the stone. 

Annalise stood silently as the hunter struggled to gather their thoughts. “It is a loss that I no longer have a way to feel,” they said with a weak shrug. “I’ve been robbed of my mourning. I’m grieving a lack of grief. Damn!” they exclaimed, and they clapped their palm against the stone. “I am sorry, your majesty, to complain about it so— and I thank you for— for this insight that you have offered me. Truly.”

A hand, soothingly warm, was placed upon their shoulder. The hunter closed their eyes and for a few long moments they did nothing more than appreciate the touch.

“Come, now,” Annalise said. “Let Us distract thee with tales of other tragedies.”

The hunter nodded and followed her to the tall stone keep.

* * *

“Lady Elaine told thee of King Lycaon and Cyllene,” Annalise said as she led the way down a dim but vast hallway within the keep. The stained glass windows had been covered with thick curtains and the only light came from the candle Annalise had lit and now carried with her. The hunter could tell that the walls held more painted portraits and some tall tapestries, but in the flickering candlelight it was difficult to discern any further detail.

“She did,” the hunter replied. “As well as the fifty or so children.”

“Of course,” Annalise said. “A prodigious progenitor, he was. He had a surplus of sons. Perhaps that is why he decided to offer one up to the gods.”

The hunter frowned.

“The old king found his wife deep within the caverns of the earth,” Annalise said. “But he found a child there, too. A wretched, stillborn thing, steaming with blood, and set upon an altar that Cyllene had long been praying to. When he held it in his hands, he felt the faint and fading tether of something umbilical— while the babe had been born of Cyllene, it held kinship with something far greater that lurked only at the edges of the thin firmament, and it drifted further away the colder the babe grew. Lycaon remained utterly entranced by it even as the corpse went cold and rotted to filth once brought up to the daylight.”

“He had four children by Cyllene, in the hopes that one would emerge in such an accursed state,” Annalise said, and she paused to dip her candle towards a sconce upon the wall. “To his dismay, they were all quite healthy and happy children. Three daughters, Calista among them— and then the fourth, the only son that Cyllene bore. Weak, he was— but he lived, and soon, he thrived.”

“Lycaon had lost many fine knights delving back into the deep in search of another child like he had seen. Cyllene was also of a delicate composure and would not be able to bear another child. Still, he was beholden to his obsession. This final son was as close a replica of what he had seen as he could manage.” She sighed as the flame in the sconce sputtered to life. “Thou mayst well know that Cainhurst has long been a collector of misfortunes. But oft have We also considered them to be delicacies. The motions of the gods are obscure and unknowable, but man is built to interpret even the most scattered of patterns. Wouldst thou like to guess what the old king thought the gods desired of such a child?”

The hunter shook their head.

“To consume it,” Annalise stated. “His final son, Nyctimus, Lycaon offered as a meal. He was roasted until the blood was steaming and set upon the altar so that his essence offered succor to the distant god.” She turned to the next sconce and lit it. “‘Twas with that banquet that Cainhurst experienced its first truly long night.”

The flames flickered high. The hunter stared up at a tall tapestry. Beasts were locked alongside beasts in writhing patterns, teeth biting at ankles, wild eyes pale and gleaming. They circled one another in an unending frenzy. At the peak of the monstrous dance was a far greater beast with jaws stained red and a stomach struck through with a sword.

“The old king incited the anger of the Great Ones with his offering,” Annalise stated. “Every child of Lycaon not born of Cyllene was turned into a beast. On that night, the royalty of Cainhurst ate itself.” 

She drew close to the hunter. “Calista was the eldest of the survivors— and the one that drove the sword through her father’s belly. The throne went to her. She vowed never to marry and to let Lycaon’s accursed blood end with her, and she entreated her sisters to promise the same. They did— but it was Cyllene’s blood, not Lycaon’s, that made them break their vows. For the sisters, it was their long and robust lives— centuries long, if the accounts are to be believed— as well as a yearning for the family that had been taken from them. For Calista, it was the attention of the gods. Slicing her father open had given her a taste for the hunt— but the hunt had brought her closer to the thin veil of the night. She could hear shapeless whispers drawing closer, and feel a strange stirring in her blood, and as the night drew long and the moon grew close— it terrified her. She couldn’t bear to carry the bloodied _thing_ that had obsessed her father so. So, she took a common knight as a consort and conceived a simple human child as quickly as she could.” Her helm tilted. “And so, I was born.”

“To her relief, the gods went silent,” Annalise said. “She had chosen mundanity over greatness.” Her tone grew sour. “A beastly stupidity over transcendence. It didn’t take many more long nights for her to succumb to the same thirst for blood that had consumed her father. She was slain by her favored circle of sworn knights. Her pelt hangs in another hall,” she said, and she turned to face the hunter. “If thou holdst any small interest in seeing it.”

The hunter frowned. “Your mother—”

“Had dearly wished for her line to end with her, and she made quite sure that I knew it,” Annalise stated. “As did my aunts and their many progeny. They had their eyes set upon the throne. It would have gone to their children once Calista had passed. There was to be war between them all for it, I have no doubt. But I was there to take it, and so I brought them a dreadful peace.” When she spoke again, the hunter knew that beneath the mask, she must have been smiling. “Every terribly frivolous member of my bloodline I love quite dearly— but never shall they sit upon that throne.”

The hunter slowly nodded.

“Cainhurst had lost governance of much of its territory with the massacre of the feast,” Annalise said. “The kingdom clung to a few scattered outposts but much of the worldly glory had been lost. There was still gold and silver and countless treasures dredged up from the deep earth, and we had our own arcane secrets, too, all saved from Lycaon’s expeditions. Thus, I decided that the future of Cainhurst lay in loftier lands— in fixing the fallacies of my forebears.”

The helm inclined as if Annalise was staring up at the tapestry. The hunter wanted to take her hand in some attempt to comfort her, but as the silence stretched they also felt a crawling at the back of their neck, a slow surge of adrenaline in their limbs— a muted instinct to run.

“There was a college not far from Us in dire need of funds. When I sent my first student to Byrgenwerth— couldst thou guess what they reported back to me?” she said wryly. “The provost had four of the things embalmed and stored in jars. A fifth had been splayed open for dissection, the body soaked with blood and still steaming.”

She grasped the hunters hand. "Let us talk of lighter things," she said. "And let us do so in lighter locales." 

After a long moment of consideration, the hunter nodded. They held her warm hand in their own as she led them through the keep.

* * *

  
  
[Please check out this artwork of the Lycaon tapestry done by Häxan!](https://twitter.com/corpsehaus/status/1365156656158498819?s=20)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELCUM 2 MY CAINHURST HISTORY BULLSHITTING POWER HOUR...............................  
> yeah it's just "what if the myth of lycaon serving his son to zeus for dinner but Great Ones" and "what if the myth of ursa major but...... Great Ones" but it was super fun to write
> 
> old king of cainhurst: red jelly..........strawberry flavor? i see,  
> old king of cainhurst: so here is a baby  
> great ones: wonderful, we love baby  
> old king of cainhurst: .... for dinner?  
> great ones:  
> great ones: what the FUCK,
> 
> also lmfao i was going to get to the inclusion of logarius this chapter but, well,
> 
> as always, thank you for reading and i hope you enjoyed!


	9. Chapter 9

They reached a portion of the keep that seemed to be traversed more frequently; the carpet had faded with footsteps and all the sconces upon the walls were already lit. As always, the hall was lined with portraits of nobles, the ostentatious golden frames crowding each other for visual supremacy. Beneath the portrait-plastered walls were queues of marble statues, all in varying states of dress: some were layered with finely-chiseled fur cloaks while others barely bothered to mask their nudity with long stone swoops of carved chiffon.

The hunter had questions that they wanted to ask the queen, questions that had long been burning at the back of their thoughts, but the pleasant warmth of the hand they held kept their queries simple. “All these portraits,” they said, and they nodded towards one depiction of a sternly-faced woman in a gold-embroidered coat. “Are there any with interesting stories behind them?”

Annalise hummed assent. “That one in particular is of the Lady Lelia, who made a point of never doing anything interesting in the span of her entire life. Instead, she collected all the dramas of others and doled them out as gossip. She had the peculiar skill of being able to whisper so quietly as to only be heard when the listening ear was pressed right to her lips— and yet, that same secret whisper could be heard ten paces away, if she wanted it to be. Her rumors were rather infectious.” Her helm tilted. “And she was a grandmother to Lady Alanna— thou’rt acquainted with her, yes?”

The hunter raised their brows as they looked the portrait over once more. The tightly pouting mouth did seem familiar, now that she mentioned it. “How about that one?” they said, and they pointed to a portrait closer to the ceiling. The woman within had pale hair pulled back in a ponytail. A ruffle of fur framed a stretch of velvet across her chest, with lines interlacing across in a way reminiscent of a spiderweb. A chain attached to the fur held three hanging silver charms shaped like bells.

“Ah, Lady Sabine,” Annalise answered. “A daughter of Sophis— the youngest sister to Calista and Dia. Of any of my broken-oath generation, she was apparently the most like my grandmother.”

“She was like Cyllene?” the hunter asked.

“Aye.” Annalise paused. “She was the kindest of my cousins, but her thoughts were always quite preoccupied with the arcane. She attended Byrgenwerth with my blessing and took to the labyrinth as if it were her true home.” Her voice grew wry and nearly flippant. “Perhaps it was, really. The school’s finest prospectors never were able to find her after that last expedition.”

The hunter stared up at the portrait. They gently squeezed Annalise’s hand. She did not respond, but to their relief, neither did she pull away.

“Have you any happy memories here?” the hunter asked.

“Plenty,” she replied. “But every comedy here is tied to a tragedy. Weddings share altars with funerals. Lavish banquets are to be had afore duels to the death. We have gathered every sort of torture and every sort of joy to this castle.” She lightly tugged at the hunter’s hand before guiding them further down the hall.

“A collector of misfortune,” the hunter recited.

“That We are, indeed,” Annalise replied.

“Am I your newest acquisition?”

She made a low, thoughtful hum. Her hand slipped from theirs as she turned to face them.

“Have I any happy memories at all?” the hunter asked. “From— from before? You would know better than I. How do you know, by the way?”

Annalise tapped her fingers against the low neckline of her dress as she thought.

“I don’t mean to bore you with many questions about my past, your majesty,” the hunter said. “I just… well, the curiosity is there.”

“‘Tis no more than simple scrying,” she replied. “I could show thee.”

The hunter did little to hide the eagerness in their expression. They nodded enthusiastically. “Please.”

“Then I suppose that I must,” she said, and she laughed, the sound of it subtle behind her helm. “What other questions have thee for the gleaning?”

“I have many questions, but in truth most are not about myself,” the hunter replied. “And I do not want to be too bold.”

“Know that thy careful boldness is appreciated. Thou shalt not be broken upon the rack for a mere question.” She paused. “Unless, of course, it displeases me. Or if it pleases me. Such is the way of monarchs.”

The hunter shifted their weight from one foot to the other. “All these portraits,” they said. “Are any of them of you?”

The helm tilted and Annalise was silent for so long that the hunter began to genuinely worry. “Portraiture grew more refined during the early years of my rule and I have kept quite still for my share of depictions, but I always did prefer the physicality and permanence of sculpture,” she stated. She drew close to the hunter’s side and gestured towards the wide array of statues. “A few are allegorical. Most are the long-dead beastly kin of Lycaon. A select remainder depict his survivors and their offspring. One is me. Wouldst thou like to guess?”

The hunter stared wide-eyed at the crowd of stone-hewn forms.

“Thou’rt incapable of deciding?” She leaned against the hunter’s side and pointed to guide their line of sight. “Look closely— is there nary a spark of familiarity for thee?”

The hunter glanced at her, then back to the statue: a carved sheet draped over one beckoning arm, a scrap of the fabric fluttering over the hips in a coy attempt at decency, a bare chest, and a direct gaze, confrontational. They then looked at literally anything but the queen or the statue as they stammered.

Annalise laughed, quietly but for long enough that she brought one hand up to her helm as if to cover her mouth.

The hunter let out a sigh of joint consternation and relief. “So, who is that _really_?”

“Someone the sculptor must have fancied,” she replied. “But ‘tis meant to be a spirit of boldness. A touch to the statue’s thighs is a blessing to one about to embark on a hunt. I thought thou mayst appreciate such a thing.”

The hunter smiled but their neck prickled when they heard a scraping sound. It was followed by footsteps, slow and staggering. A figure had entered the far end of the hall; he walked towards Annalise and the hunter by laboriously pulling himself along with a tall, gnarled staff. His hair was white and wild. His robes held a hint of golden sheen, but they were tattered to a dingy brown. And his face— desiccated, the sockets gray and empty, his mouth open to suck in air past long and gumless teeth.

But atop that fearsome face was a gleaming crown, studded with a rich rainbow of jewels, and so the hunter stared. There had been statues and portraits of past royalty wearing similar crowns— surely they were now looking upon the king of Cainhurst.

Had Annalise ever even mentioned him? He had not sat at the head of the banquet; he had not observed the duel from the highest seat of the arena. The hunter was certain that they had not glimpsed him at all during the extent of their stay in the castle.

The king doddered further forward, his staff slamming against the ground as he leaned his weight against it. Had he grown feeble with age? How old was he? Had this been a royal union born of love or out of some political convenience?

Their wildly spiraling internal questioning gave way to more immediate concerns: he was coming closer. Decorum was of utmost importance. The hunter dropped to one knee and imitated the customary Cainhurst bow.

The king kept his lurching pace. He walked past the hunter without noticing them. They kept themself low in the bow, just in case.

From their side, they heard Annalise laugh; it was not the softly teasing amusement of before, but something with a rough, almost vicious quality. The hunter stared up at her with wide eyes.

“Up,” she commanded with a quick wave of her hand. “Up, up.”

They clambered to their feet. The scrape-shuffle-scrape of the king continued down the hallway.

“Your majesty,” the hunter said. “I mean no offense, but—”

“Nay, ‘tis not the king,” Annalise answered. When the hunter gave her a look of pained bewilderment her helm tilted and she waved dismissively.

“‘Tis merely Our jester,” she said, and there was just enough flippancy in her tone that the hunter knew that she was concealing a raw rage.

And Annalise knew that the hunter had spotted the frayed edges of her illusion; her helm now faced them directly and her shoulders had stiffened.

“I’m curious,” the hunter said. “Of course I am. But… one revelation at a time, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” Annalise echoed. “All in due time, then. First, we have thy memories yet to retrieve.”

At the very least, she took the hunter’s hand again.

* * *

The chamber the hunter found themself in was opulent, much like the rest of the castle. Here, though, things seemed especially luxurious. A dozen golden candelabras held up tall candle spires. The carpet was intricately patterned, with curls of purple and gold flora drifting over rich red. Thick embroidered curtains hung down from the ceiling, hiding the harshness of the stone walls. More of the marble statues were crowded along them, but the hunter noticed that many of them were broken. Several lacked heads. A few shoulders were cracked into raw stone while the arms lay discarded on the floor. Beneath the shattered elbows of a matronly woman was a stony bundle of cloth; an infant, perhaps, but the carving cut too deep for the hunter to see what was inside.

More curtains swept from ceiling to floor, partitioning the room. Annalise walked ahead of the hunter and pushed the drapes apart to reveal a recessed pit. It was a shallow square drop into the stone, only a few hands deep. Glass-lined lanterns sat upon the corners to provide a faint light. The interior of the pit was stuffed with plush cushions and tasseled pillows. In the center, however, was a golden bowl holding a pool of red atop a squat marble socle.

The hunter wrinkled their nose. They had grown accustomed to the sweet sting of iron blood that was ever-present around the queen, especially after receiving some distant dose of the same from the crow knight, but here it hung in the air as heavily as the velvet curtains.

It was not a steep step down into the pit, but the hunter took a few quick strides in order to beat Annalise to the cushions. As they kept their footing on the soft surface they offered their hand to assist her.

“Honestly,” she replied dryly, but her fingers pressed against the hunter’s palm as she made the brief descent.

She approached the golden bowl and knelt before it. The hunter took their seat adjacent to her and peered at the blood. The surface was as still and calm as glass.

“When all is melted in blood, all is reborn,” Annalise said. “Thou knowst that more than most.” She reached beneath the outer edge of the cushion beside her; once it was lifted, it revealed a small compartment cut into the stone. There was a knife, a vial of clear liquid, and a delicately embroidered handkerchief— a bloodied handkerchief, one that had once been pressed to the hunter’s face with great care.

“Thou mayst have no sense of thine own, and they all have been made faint by those thou hadst slain, but in all blood there is an echo. It is exceedingly quiet, a single whispering voice in a vast orchestra, but thy past remains there true.” Her helm tilted as she unfolded the bloodstained cloth. “I shall amplify it.”

She picked up the clear vial, uncorked it, and poured a few drops onto the cloth; the air was cut with a sharply astringent scent. The rusty stains of dried blood began to flow as if they had just been spilled, beading up on the cloth in tiny droplets. She tipped the handkerchief over the bowl and the hunter’s blood dribbled into the pool. The ripples created by the miniscule impacts disappeared within seconds.

She set the vial and the handkerchief back inside the compartment. Then, the thin silver blade was lifted to her palm.

The hunter watched, unblinking, as she sliced across her hand. Blood, dark and thick, crept from the wound. A droplet slid into the pool and the blood roiled.

“This curiosity of thine,” she said as the last of the blood slipped from the gleaming metal of the knife. “What is it born of? Mere inquisitiveness?” Her tone shifted; there was ice in her voice again. “Or is it hope?”

The hunter frowned. “My own memory is a mystery to me. Of course I want to know more.”

“Thou hadst asked for a _happy_ memory. Thou’rt hoping to see thy kinfolk and compatriots.” Her voice softened. “’Tis only natural to do so. And thou’rt aware that there is no recognition to be had— they are strangers to thee, now. If thou’rt seeking warmth in these recollections, thou shalt find none. Thine hope for some fleeting familiarity shall only lead thee to anguish.”

“I understand,” the hunter insisted. “I merely want to…” They lifted a hand and gestured vaguely before letting it drop back to their lap.

Her helm inclined in a slight nod. “Heed Our warning well,” she said, and she held out her hand to the hunter.

The hunter noticed that the slice across her hand had disappeared, as if she had never made the cut at all.

When they let their fingers curl over her palm, the lights in the surrounding lanterns guttered out. There was still some illumination from the candles in the outer portion of the hall, but it turned into a thick, murky red within the curtained pit.

“Fix thy gaze upon the surface,” Annalise instructed. “Stare until thine own eyes grow doubtful.”

A chill slithered uneasily across the back of the hunter’s neck. They gripped at Annalise’s hand and stared at the pool of blood. The surface was still unnaturally disturbed, constantly shifting in overlapping ripples. As the hunter’s sight adjusted to the lack of light they felt their peripheral vision grow fuzzy. Pinpricks of color, too small to be properly discerned, flitted across the shadows. It was akin to the sensation of a palm pressed to a closed eye: while the hunter could still see their surroundings clearly, there was an incoherent mist of shifting hues draped over everything, and the swirling strangeness was now the heaviest atop the surface of the ritual blood. The blood in the golden bowl was still roiling, but now the hunter was also sensing movement where there was none; minuscule shifts across the fabric of the cushions, wriggling vaporous shapes at the foot of the surrounding curtains, and behind them—

“Do not look away,” Annalise said, and her nails pressed against the hunter’s hand. “Look only to the blood.”

They took a deep, shuddering inhale and stared at the red basin. There were images now, flat and vivid as if projected directly upon their imagination. Dozens of faces, pallid and mask-like, crowded their vision. Sweat beaded upon their brow.

“Persevere, good hunter,” Annalise said quietly.

They swallowed and stared. The sickly faces shifted. Dried dribbles of yellow bile disappeared from spoiled-plum lips. The assembly of the dead livened and walked busily across the dirt floor of a village hall. Dyed cloth ribbons swept across the ceiling. A long table was loaded with food. An old woman held a wailing infant and shushed it. A man tossed a rambunctious dog some scraps.

The hunter spotted themself. They were in much plainer garb; mostly wool, it seemed, all in dull browns and grays. They were rolling some sort of large cask towards the feast; they paused to wipe sweat from their forehead. They locked eyes with a woman sitting upon a nearby bench; she made some brief quip and the hunter happily laughed.

“An old friend of thine,” Annalise said, and while her voice startled them the vision did not relent. “She shared her birthday with thee, and was delivered by the same midwife.”

The hunter stared at a fat fly that had landed upon a bowl of yellow butter. The past version of the hunter had spotted it, as well; the cask was abandoned as they swatted the bug away and grabbed a stray dish to place over the bowl as a makeshift lid.

An older woman placed a wooden platter upon the table. The past hunter greeted her with a grin. The two spoke; an elderly man, walking unsteadily with a cane, joined the conversation.

There was happiness here, and a sense of warmth, but the faces pale with the bloat of rot still haunted the hunter’s vision. They glanced at the forgotten cask, at a woman drinking from a sloshing tankard, and at a man dipping a cloth into a bucket of water.

“They’re all—” the hunter said haltingly. “You said—”

“A plague from unclean waters, yes,” Annalise answered. “But it was not here, not now.”

The celebration continued. The past hunter sat at a table, their cheeks flushed from drink, and they were swaying with the others around them, caught up in some impromptu and jubilant song. But in the smiling faces of their fellows there was still a sense of permanent stillness, a nightmarish awareness that the party was populated by the dead.

The hunter shuddered.

“Thou’rt upset,” Annalise stated. “Is this not what thou hadst hoped for?”

They stared at the sweaty face of a laughing man. His cheeks were ruddy. His arms waved with excitement. But beneath the skin, thick like clay, was dead gray flesh.

“Gods, they’re all dead. I can feel it.” The hunter pulled away from Annalise’s grip and clutched their hand over their mouth. “Can’t you feel it?”

“One grows accustomed,” Annalise said faintly, and though the hunter closed their eyes they could still see the scene imprinted upon their sight.

What was true memory and what was imagination now, they did not know. But the hunter did know that they had seen every person in this hall fall ill, succumbing with such vast swiftness that few had even been granted a burial. The same happy self sitting before them had later stumbled over greasy, fly-laden bodies, deliriously searching through the shelves of friends for food, for coin, for any possible route to salvation.

On the way out of one home, they had tripped by a corpse slumped against a wall, the cut of light through the window putrefying them faster in parts, leaving an unexpected slipperiness on the floor. The hunter had been terrified that in their pain and exhaustion that they would not be able to rise again.

The hunter had felt a feverish, mindless panic— _I will not die here, I will not die here, I will not die—_

Light brightened the room. The little flames within the lanterns had sputtered back to life. The hunter cracked one eye open. The blood in the center basin was still rippling, but it was slowly settling to a calm stillness.

Annalise tilted her helm. “As I said. Hope is a wretched thing, as it is answered only by reality.”

 _Had that been reality?_ It had _felt_ real, and both terror and longing had welled up within the hunter’s heart with such awful strength, but it had all come to them like a dream, like a fantasy, and they felt—

No, what they were feeling now was surely that same insidious hope again, the same one that had made them insist that the night had ended and that the false dawn was a true one.

“I feel— I don’t feel well,” they stammered. “My apologies, your majesty, but if we— if we could speak again, at a later time—”

“Thy exhaustion is well earned,” Annalise said flatly. She busied herself with tidying the scant ritual materials in the compartment beneath the cushion. “Return to thy chambers. Rest. Hold audience with Us in the library when thou’rt recovered.”

They rubbed their palm across their forehead. After a long moment of uncertain silence, they spoke. “I— thank you. Thank you for showing me this. If you wish to share it, I would love to hear more of your past, as well. You have told me so much and yet so little.” They faintly laughed. “Better to speak of yours than mine, in any case. Mine is a sad and meaningless tale to the both of us.”

There was a quiet sigh from behind the helm. “Any past of Ours is similarly sad and twice as futile. But if thy taste for grief has been sated, then it need not be revisited. Rest well. We look forward to our next encounter.”

“No,” the hunter insisted, and then they shook their head. “I mean— if you care to share it, I will listen.”

The cushion was placed back over the compartment. Annalise brushed her fingers off on the cloth of her gown. “Then I shall. When next we speak, I will tell thee of the King of Cainhurst.”

* * *

The air outside the castle, as slicingly cold as ever, was a welcome change from the muffling stillness of the scrying chamber. The frigid gust rushed past the hunter’s face as they crossed the bridge path. They squinted against the worst of the wind and quickly made for the grand door at the other end.

They supposed it would be best to return to Elaine’s chambers. It would just be a turn down the hall, then down the narrow spiral steps— the steps that were down the path marked by the painting of the woman with pale green eyes and a red overcoat— or was it the painting of the older woman with the ruby earring? The hunter couldn’t remember.

And what would they do upon finding Elaine’s bed again? Rest? Rest, knowing that past the pale veneer of the morning sky was the hunt? Rest, and in closing their eyes reinvite the pale dead faces they could never truly grieve?

They took the next stairwell they saw. They did not think it was the correct one; upon reaching a dull wooden door at the bottom they knew so. They pulled the latch anyway and braced themself against the cold. This passageway opened to the central courtyard, the one beneath the bridge path to the keep and the massive door to the exterior of the castle. To their left was more statuary, a fountain, and some carefully maintained shrubbery, though the leaves were tinged with dying fall browns. To the right was the rocky slope that dipped towards the deep foundations of the castle and reeked of iron. Ahead of them was the smaller but grander golden door that opened to the gleaming entrance hall.

This would be easier, the hunter thought; they remembered the path through the castle they took when they first arrived much better than whatever path Elaine had taken them on after their bath.

They began to walk. Their boot brushed against something that rolled and clattered against stone. They paused and looked down.

It was a small bell, about the length of their thumb. When they picked it up, it gave a quiet, tinny ring that pricked at their memory.

They had seen a bell of this kind before. But where?

It was too small to be the of resonant sort used to call for other hunters; those were also typically made of well-kept silver, while this seemed to be a dull brass. The topmost metal ring of the bell had snapped, as if it had been broken off of something. The hunter rolled it in their palm and tilted their head.

They glanced over towards the shrubbery.

“Good hunter?” Elaine asked.

They turned on their heel. They clutched the bell tight to their palm, as if to hide it.

“Whatever are you doing?” she asked with a grimace that managed to be haughty and concerned all at once.

They pushed past their trepidation and forced their fingers to uncurl. They held up the bell. “Do you know what this is?”

She frowned at it. “A bit of rubbish.”

“Anything more specific come to mind?” the hunter asked.

“A bell?”

“Well, yes, but—” The hunter sighed. “It’s _from_ something, I must know what, but I can’t recall.”

Elaine squinted at them.

“Whatever are _you_ doing?” the hunter countered. “And… may I join you?”

“Nothing particularly exciting,” Elaine said with a shrug. “I was just speaking with Irene about the way Sofia had her last gown tailored— taking the hem _that_ high, really— and we were considering holding our tea out of doors but the weather coming in is rather brisk, isn’t it? So we decided to move it all to the library so that Alanna could work on her recital. She’s been butchering that poem for weeks, really. I was just out here to see if Emmeline would like to—”

The hunter nodded in appropriate intervals, but their mind was elsewhere. Where had they seen the damned thing? Had it been attached to one of the carriage horses and fallen off? _Was_ it some component of a hunting tool? It pulled at their memory so insistently— if they were to return to the Dream and search through the workshop chest, they could probably find something akin to it.

The Dream! Of course. Recollection sparked through their thoughts. The same little bells were atop the messenger-tended lanterns.

“A lantern,” they blurted out, and Elaine furrowed her eyebrows. “Have you seen a lantern around?”

“…a lantern?” she said slowly. “Upon the steps, I suppose, but they won’t be lit. It isn’t dark out. Why?”

“Not a lantern for light, I mean the sort with the little…” They pantomimed tiny messenger movements with their fingers and Elaine’s confusion only grew. With a huff, the hunter turned and started peering through the bushes.

“Are you quite mad?” Elaine asked.

“No,” the hunter said as they shoved their hands inside the twisting and brittle branches.

“Then what is it? Have you caught the scent of something?”

“I’m not a _bloodhound_ ,” they griped as they glanced over the stony ground.

“Well, you’re _acting_ like a dog after a hare,” she said with a sniff. “And don’t tear my shirt!”

The hunter paused to roll up their sleeves. When they reached back into the foliage, the twigs scraped at their skin, but one part of the shrubbery shifted. The roots were loose in the soil.

They pushed the portion of the shrub aside. They stared down at a warped piece of metal, snapped near the base. It would have been an innocuous bit of scrap embedded in the earth, but scattered across the dirt were tiny metal links— broken pieces of the fine chain that would have fastened the bells and the lantern to the stave.

The hunter stiffened. They took a deep breath. Uneasiness settled in their gut.

Elaine peered over their shoulder and frowned. “Some old part of a post for the horses?”

“A hunter’s lantern,” they said. “Someone broke it, and hid that they broke it.”

“What makes it a _hunter_ _’s_ lantern?” Elaine asked.

The hunter slowly turned and watched her.

She pouted. “Now that’s a scary look,” she said with a half-step back. “ _Why_ are you upset?”

They opened their mouth to speak, and then closed it.

Why were they upset?

To see a broken lantern unsettled them, of course, because it signified some hostility towards a hunter of the Dream. But for there to be hostility here— the crow, the queen, and all the nobles had welcomed the hunter, had fed them, bathed them— had _played_ at killing them, but only played. The crow treated them more than kindly, and the queen had held their hand through their grief.

Guilt crept up their spine. Breaking a lantern didn’t hurt the hunter, not really; if they thought about it, it was a reasonable defense. The hunter couldn’t _truly_ be killed. If they had turned against Cainhurst for some reason, they would become an inexhaustible threat. But if they were to die and be sent back to the Dream without a lantern on the island to return to, then it would be far more difficult for them to approach from the mainland and attack again.

And the lack of lantern didn’t keep them from leaving if they needed to do so; there was that rune, ever-present at the back of their mind, that would allow them to reawaken safely.

There. The hunter had no reason to be upset.

Why, then, did their throat feel so tight?

“Sorry,” the hunter said. “I merely— I merely thought…” They trailed off.

Elaine frowned and pursed her lips, her glare clearly telling the hunter to continue.

“The dream is my home,” the hunter finally said. “When the night is over and I really wake up— where will I go?”

“Haven’t you got a home?” Elaine asked with a quirk of her eyebrow.

They pressed a hand to their forehead. “I…”

Elaine crossed her arms and stared at them.

“All of them,” the hunter said. “It— it surely couldn’t have been all of them. There were so many with me in the hall. Some must have fled, some must not have fallen ill. I cannot be the only one that lived. I cannot!”

The impatient sternness melted away from Elaine’s expression as the hunter began to shiver. She approached the hunter and gathered them in her arms.

The hunter gulped down a breath and pressed their face into her shoulder. “Gods, she’s right,” they mumbled. “Hope only hurts me. It makes me lie to myself.”

“I used to wait at the door every night of the hunt,” Elaine said. “The same way Emmeline does. One night I had no one to greet. And another night, and another. It took months, really. For me to stop waiting at that door.”

The hunter hugged her tightly and squeezed their eyes shut. Their fingers pressed against her back.

Pale faces and dead clay flesh pushed beneath their fingertips, cold, always cold— the hunter inhaled sharply. Their hands twitched. Elaine patted their back. The hunter tilted their head against her shoulder and held their breath to keep from screaming. As seconds slid past they calmed themself. Elaine’s pulse was evident against them, a light fluttering pressed to their cheek. She was warm— her back had only been cool to the touch due to the wind.

Elaine was alive, the hunter told themself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter brought to you by:
> 
> the kubler-ross grief cycle  
> Caputo, G. et al. (2014.) "Visual Perception during Mirror Gazing at One's Own Face in Patients with Depression."  
> 70's conversation pits  
> and a vampire story trope yet to be fully revealed
> 
> as always, thank you so much for reading and i hope you enjoyed <3 this chapter was a little more out there so i hope it was 👍
> 
> grandpa loggy will return..........


	10. Chapter 10

It was less a recital of poetry and more of a dissection. Or a butchering, if the hunter was feeling as unkind as Alanna’s audience. It was a complicated and epic-length affair, and for each line there was much debate to be had as to if the emphasis should go here or there or not at all. Alanna had already had a row with Sofia about how often she had been interrupting while Irene, who was a little more tactful but not wisely so, had then interrupted them with a few of her own delicately phrased suggestions.

The hunter had watched them argue with an amused horror— they were treating Alanna rather harshly as she struggled through her lines and her cheeks had gone a blotchy, frustrated red. But when it was Sofia’s turn to pick up a stanza or two, Alanna tore into her diction with such fervor that the hunter wondered if the two would actually come to blows.

Elaine didn’t participate in the recital, but she did keep careful balance of who complimented or slighted who— they could see her gaze flitting from person to person as she worked out some internal calculus that the hunter was sure would sway all sorts of petty decisions in the future. Who would have a ribbon borrowed and never returned, or who would find an auspicious seat so luckily left open at the banquet. The hunter couldn’t call it cutthroat, not when they had experienced exactly that several times on the hunt, but the ladies all interacted with such a ferocious yet bloodless intensity that the hunter couldn’t help but feel intimidated.

The reading shifted to Irene. Where the others had ranged in dramatic delivery, her affectation was so steadily flat that the ever-critical ladies were stunned to a silent and blank boredom. The hunter caught Elaine stifling a yawn.

They felt the anchor drag of sleep upon themself, as well. It was odd, now that they thought about it; for all the long night, adrenaline had pushed them forward as effectively as a blade to the back. They dreamed but did not sleep. However, within the castle, they had drifted off after the banquet, and here, facing the relentless drone of Irene’s recital, they had to fight to keep their eyes open.

The hunter leaned against the wooden arm of their chair and looked out the color-warped panes of a stained glass window. Beyond the glass was an oblique view of the coast across from the castle; the hunter could spot the looming hillside shamble of the witches’ abode if they squinted. The tall spires of Yharnam cut up into the sky, but much of the land was barren and rocky, crumbling its way down into the surrounding water. There were trees further past the curve of the bay, a crooked shadow shape of branches and the distant silhouettes of windmills. Away from the rocky coast, then, there must be richer soil— farms, surely, for the great city could not support itself on blood alone— could it?

The hunter wondered how far away their place of origin was— how many mountains, how many valleys, and was it distant enough that Yharnam’s long and twisted shadow was out of sight?

They could ask Annalise, and she would surely answer, but what would be the point? Why know where they were from if there was nothing to return to?

The hunter stiffened their shoulders and bit at the interior of their cheek. They felt as if their misery wouldn’t weigh so heavily upon their mind if they would only be willing to relinquish their grip upon it. But it was easy, so easy, to let every thought circle back to returning home. And it wasn’t all out of nostalgic indulgence— when the night really did end, as surely it would, where would they go? They had asked Elaine that earnestly and while her sympathy was appreciated she had not offered the hunter an answer. Not that they blamed her; there was no answer. Yharnam hated outsiders. The hunter could attempt to wedge their way into the life of the city, but it would be a long and hard road to calling it home. And with what they had seen of this night of the hunt, with what they had seen of the Healing Church, there was hardly a guarantee that the city wouldn’t collapse before the sun rose.

They could wander, then. Take the skills they had, learned from hunting or from whatever they had done in their past life, and travel until they found a place that was home enough.

The hunter stared out at the water as a pang of loneliness struck them through.

There was one possibility, one wrapped up in a hope that felt entirely too fantastical, and so they pushed the thought away.

Irene droned on. The hunter let their eyelids settle closed.

* * *

They did not sleep deeply. The hunter’s mind drifted in and out of a dim, thoughtless grayness. Something pricked at their awareness after some stretch of time— Irene had paused in her recital and Elaine was sending someone off for tea.

The hunter blinked back to cognizance and looked out the window once more. Surely not much time had passed, but they had no way of knowing here. The sky was still locked into the dawn, and the ladies seemed entirely unaware of the sunlight’s strangeness.

Movement caught their peripheral attention. They leaned closer to the glass and craned their neck. Near the base of the castle, they could just barely see a corner of the entry courtyard leading out to the bridge. They glimpsed two horses stamping at the rocky ground. A carriage was being prepared.

“Leaving the nest again,” Elaine said from over their shoulder, and the hunter startled.

“The crow?” they asked. “The crow is leaving?”

“Of course,” she replied, and she arched an eyebrow. “Goodness, don’t you look rather lonesome. I thought this little farce of a reading might have cheered you up.” She tilted her head back and looked down her nose at the distant carriage. “Or is something else the matter, now?”

The hunter, surprised, tried to school their expression back to a plain impassivity.

“You are fond of the crow?” Elaine asked. The other ladies all suddenly busied themselves with looking very much like they weren’t listening in.

“The crow has been very kind to me,” the hunter carefully admitted.

“Good,” Elaine said. “Good, good. And the crow will return, you know. Always does.”

“…Do you know much of the crow?” the hunter asked.

She raised both eyebrows. “Not personally.”

The hunter allowed themself one last wistful look out the window. “The crow, to me, seems to be a rightly good and honorable knight.”

Elaine tried to stifle her laughter very quickly. The hunter turned and gave her a wide-eyed stare.

“How romantic!” Elaine exclaimed as she waved one hand hurriedly. “Yes, yes, all of our honorable and chivalrous knights.”

“The crow especially,” Sofia snickered.

Alanna nodded along. “Especially.”

The hunter furrowed their brow.

“Our hunting knights tidy all sorts of messes,” Elaine explained. “Some are nobles in their own right, descendants or proteges of Calista’s dearest hunters, and they deserve the full respect of their name. Others are… of a different class. We are generous patrons to them, and they do well to prove their worth.”

The hunter frowned. “Then the crow is—?”

“A special case,” Alanna said.

Sofia smiled. “A maven of a raven.”

“If rumor is to be believed, that one started quite lowly— a nameless pauper child, some unintended product of a droll drama between a scullery maid and a Yharno,” Elaine said as she leaned forward with a conspiratorial look.

Irene tilted her head. “I thought it was a liaison with a wayward Hinterlander.”

Alanna frowned. “I think that was the old one.”

Irene squinted. “The old one…?”

“Does it matter?” Elaine said with a sniff. “It’s always the same with a crow. They migrate around, claim some territory, and pass the coat down to whatever other stray they find suitable enough. Some other old odd outsider took this one under their wing, and I’m sure that some time soon,” she said, and as if suddenly realizing something she gave the hunter an odd glance. “Some time soon, another apprentice may be found.”

“So there’s been…” Irene said, and her usually blankly pleasant expression twisted slightly as she thought. “…more than one crow at the castle?”

“You never noticed?” Elaine exclaimed, and Alanna muffled a laugh.

“Why— why would I?” Irene stammered. “The crow— crows always keep to themselves, and certainly seem to act the same, and I—”

Elaine stared at her. “We’ve had five in our time!”

“I thought the crow was just very good at surviving the long nights,” Irene said, pouting.

“Crows generally are, but they’re also very good at having a replacement lined up and ready to go,” Sofia said. “It’s not a role that one would want to leave vacant.”

Irene’s face flushed. “They all wear the same coat then, do they? And the Queen grants them all the same fine helms, just like that? Not even some of the best of the hunting knights receive that honor.”

Sofia sighed and slumped back against her chair. “Gods, Irene, you wouldn’t be able to tell the old kings apart because they all wore the same crown.”

“We certainly wouldn’t have them all wearing those ghastly beaked things,” Alanna grumbled.

“Of course some of the castle’s highest honors are bestowed. The Queen makes great use of the crow,” Elaine said, and then she paused. “Crows.”

“Still, why would I need to know if we’ve had one crow or twenty?” Irene insisted. “I’ve never mingled overmuch with the likes of the—“

The look Elaine gave her would have sent her to a deep and defaced grave. Sofia pursed her lips and let out a hollow whistle.

“Honorable and chivalrous knights the hunters all are, and some nobles in their own right,” Alanna repeated as she picked at the lace hem of her sleeve.

“Of course the hunters are,” Irene said. “Present company excluded. Er, included. Um.”

Sofia sighed and leaned back. “Don’t think about it too hard, dear, you’ll strain yourself.”

A servant, hunched shyly as if to avoid any gaze despite the ladies paying him no mind, placed a delicate tea set upon the table and began distributing the cups. After a brief pause, he retrieved a folded bit of parchment from a pocket and slid it onto the table besides the teapot. A red cloth cap slumped over his face, hiding most of it from view, but the hunter caught a glimpse of a gray and scraggly beard before he scurried away.

Elaine snatched up the paper and read it through. The other ladies gathered their drinks and the hunter noted that there were not enough teacups for them to partake. A simple oversight, and they didn’t really mind, but the warm steam wafting up from the tea made them recognize the chill that had seeped into their limbs.

“Our hunter is invited to the upper loft for further document organization if they feel so inclined,” Elaine recited aloud. “Tea will be served.”

The hunter quickly stood.

“I’ll walk you there,” Elaine said as she re-folded the letter.

“Oh, you don’t have to—“

“I’ll walk you there,” Elaine repeated, and the hunter nodded.

* * *

“That—that daft woman,” Elaine snapped, and as she strode along the exterior balcony she left slippered footprints on the smattering of frost that had formed upon the flagstones. The hunter, baffled, decided that it was best to let Elaine stomp out her anger without their input.

“Thoughtless! Just thoughtless,” she said. “As if there’s any shame in marrying down, and it’s not marrying down, it’s elevating the other party, this has been well agreed upon ever since— it’s established! There’s precedent! Would she look down her nose at the Queen? I think not!”

As if finally remembering that the hunter was her sole audience, she turned on her heel, and her livid expression began to cool.

“I know you are... a hunter that is of no formal class, but you are our guest, and so that honor is bestowed upon you,” she said. “But there are common hunters, and there are common knights, and then there are Knights, see, but she would have them all together in one single rabble as long as she was considered somewhere above it, as if they were all no more than mere servants—“ She huffed and frowned. “She’s never even been courted. Who would want to? It’d be as engaging as courting a— a— a stupid thing.”

“She’s never had to wait by the door,” the hunter murmured.

Elaine flattened her hands against the ruched fabric of her dress. “Exactly. So what does she know?”

The hunter nodded absently and crossed their arms for warmth. Elaine stood idly now, less angry than she was merely restless. “You’ve your own tea to drink, yet,” the hunter said. “The path to the upper loft from here—?”

“Oh, it’s back the way we came,” Elaine said, and she gestured towards the archway leading back into the library. “The first set of steps to the right, and then out to the balcony. You’ll see where her majesty usually sits quite easily.”

The hunter ducked away and hurried up the creaking stairwell. So, they concluded, it was okay for Elaine to speak flippantly of the hunter knights because she had been married to one; for the same sentiment to come from Irene’s lips was an insult of the highest degree.

And while some of the hierarchic regulations had been clarified, others were still as clear as mud: the crow had the queen’s favor (and here the hunter wondered if their own presence was welcomed into the ladies’ circle not because they were a guest, but because they had spent so much time with the queen), but the crow also seemed to have the lowercase-k knight demarcation, as defined by Elaine. A special case, Alanna had said. Based on the typical function of a hunter of hunters, this specialness could perhaps be understood. After all, the crow could essentially become the headsman at a moment’s notice and execute hunters that had fallen to bloodlust before they could turn on fellow knights or nobles. It would be better to cultivate a clinical distance than to rub lace-laden elbows with Cainhurst’s upper crust.

One could try to bestow as painless a death as they could, but a battle with a hunter-turned-beast was surely not an honorable-looking affair to an outsider. To defeat monsters, one had to cling to any advantage they could find, no matter how dishonorable or unbecoming.

For example, it hadn’t been honorable when the hunter had wound up the little box, tormenting the beast with recollection just to earn a split-second opening that allowed them to gouge him from neck to waist.

_He was falling apart. It had to be done._

The hunter held no envy for Eileen’s position. But if what Elaine had insinuated was true—

The hunter paused in their ascent of the stairs. This had never been a mere celebration of the coming of the dawn. They had been invited to the castle for a reason.

If they really were meant to become the crow’s apprentice, if this really was to be a place to stay—

Hope could hurt, they knew, but they took the last of the steps lightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thank you for reading and I hope u enjoyed!


	11. Chapter 11

The hunter crested the final ascent of the winding staircase and spotted the familiar space where the queen was studying. Several mahogany tables had been pushed together to create one very long and paper-strewn line. Annalise sat at the head of it, dragging her finger over the crease of an unfolded letter to flatten it against the wood. The corresponding envelope had its wax seal pried open by a small silver knife set at the queen’s side.

A space had been cleared for the hunter; a single saucer and a steaming cup was waiting for them, as well as a small tray with the teapot, sugar, and cream.

As the hunter approached, the silver helm lifted. “Good hunter,” Annalise stated, and the hunter returned the greeting with a low bow. They pulled out a seat a few spaces away from a stack of looted manuscripts and gratefully grabbed the prepared teacup. They held it for a while, relishing the warmth before taking a sip.

“Some life has returned to thee,” Annalise said as she idly flipped through a stack of loose parchment. “Thou holdst less the look of a haunting.”

“I spent some time with Elaine and her… friends,” the hunter replied. “It was nice.”

“They do find ways to stay entertained, yes,” Annalise said.

The hunter slumped back against their seat and smiled wanly. “A good way of putting it, your majesty.”

“If thou’rt finished with frivolity, then turn thine eyes to these...” She paused and waved a hand towards the papers. “Examples of exhaustive erudition.”

“No page-turners here?” the hunter asked as they set their tea aside.

“There are deserts less dry, I’m sure,” she replied. “When we last met, we had polished gems to appraise. Now we have gravel. Though, of course, some gold may yet pass through.”

Curious, the hunter plucked a page from the nearest pile. To their surprise, the seemingly single sheet of paper flaked into two. Not much had been written on the topmost page, just a few scribbled words and scratched-out shapes, but the exact same pattern had been copied down to the page beneath. The hunter set the papers down, frowned at them, and then picked them up and separated them again. While one page remained clean, the second had faint gray thumbprint smudges pressed in from the hunter’s touch.

“Ashen reproduction,” Annalise said. “A common practice at the college, so that all details of a procedure can be retained by both the student and the instructor. Any mark made on the first page is also made on the second.”

The hunter scuffed their nail against the top page and then eagerly flipped it open; a grubby crescent shape had appeared on the second page. They let out a short and vaguely impressed hum. They grabbed another stack of the flaking paper; more equations had been marked down in duplicate, but much of the stack was merely twined-together collections of the grayer copy pages. These had been marked up with crimson ink; feedback, the hunter assumed.

One page held a diagram of an oval shape pinched to a point at its longest ends. Dashed lines passed through it and then converged at a single point. Beyond that, the lines diverged again, fanning out wide. Each ended capped in an arrow to imply further forward movement. Beneath the diagram was a short list of equations; it was here where the hunter’s attention began to flag. P equals one line F squiggly N dash one bracket…

“There’s not a chance that I was trained in sums in my old life?” the hunter asked with a forced laugh.

“These are a few steps beyond sums,” Annalise said. “But worry thyself not with them. These are the fundamentals of the craft that every student of the college was trained in. But We are already well versed in this bedrock foundation of their thought. What We desire is evidence of any independent study.”

“Something out of the ordinary, then,” the hunter murmured, and they leafed through the pile. “I’ll have to train myself to see it. This is all extraordinary to me.” With a frown, they flipped back a few pages. Someone had taken the time to create a small and rather lovely depiction of the seaside, but inescapably placed beneath it were more of the puzzling equations.

“…Sin?” the hunter asked.

Her helm tilted. “Elaborate.”

“It’s in the maths for some reason,” the hunter said, unsure of how metaphysical a Byrgenwerth equation could possibly become. “N one sin O one equals—”

“Sine,” Annalise interrupted.

“Sine,” the hunter echoed, and their gaze flitted towards her inquisitively.

“Another fundamental,” she said. “In all things there are patterns. To make any sense of them takes a particular kind of ken. This is the determination of such a pattern.” She held out her hand expectantly; the hunter handed her the paper.

“The passage of light through water,” Annalise stated. “Thou hast noticed afore how a glass chalice filled may warp the appearance of an item placed within?”

The hunter pursed their lips and appeared unsure. Annalise gestured towards the teacup. “Drink.”

They quirked their brow but swallowed the tea down to the dregs.

Annalise pressed her small knife against an envelope, freeing the wax seal from the paper. She handed the soft disk to the hunter. “Place it at the bottom of thy cup.”

The hunter glanced at the intricate pattern molded into the wax: the college’s seal, they assumed. It was a floral arrangement placed over a patterned rectangular shape— like stairs seen from above, the hunter realized, though the pattern tricked the eyes and made it difficult to tell if they were ascending or descending. They pushed the wax against the bottom of the teacup.

“Remain where thou art,” Annalise instructed. “But push thy cup away until the seal disappears from sight.”

The cup slid over the table. The hunter pressed their fingers against the rim and watched as the wax seal fell from their view, obscured by their own perspective. If they were to stand and look down they would surely see it, but from their seat, the rim of the cup just barely blocked it from sight.

Annalise nodded. “Fill the cup once more.”

The hunter lifted the teapot. They stretched forward to reach the cup and poured the liquid in. The tea swirled and settled, the hunter sat back and set the teapot aside, and then—

“Ah,” they said happily. “I can see it again.”

Glimpsed through the dark tint of the tea was the shape of the wax seal.

“Refraction,” Annalise explained. “To manipulate the passage of light is to manipulate how one’s reality is perceived.” The silver helm tilted and she tapped her fingers against the table. “Water in its myriad forms can bend light, make it sink, and uncover the unknown just as its vast depths simultaneously work to obscure it. These sorts of mysteries lurk around every corner. What else could be hiding just out of sight without some volume of water to aid thee?”

The hunter furrowed their brow.

Annalise patted the top of the nearest stack of papers. “The college sought clarity. Water was but one avenue. In this, We shall uncover more yet.”

* * *

Several tall piles of paper were now dispersed into dozens of smaller ones. Some were destined for a furnace. A select few had been set aside for further inspection. The majority, however, had been sorted into stiff leather folders and prepared for inclusion in the Cainhurst archives. Annalise had produced a wooden box containing a small set of carved ingot stamps; the hunter had found some fun in delicately hammering the numbered labels into the folders.

A servant had arrived to clear the tea; he remained, silent and hunched, near the bookshelf scaffolding.

“The task is complete,” Annalise said, and she waved a hand at the organized contents of the table. “Depart if that be thy wish, or remain if that be the same.”

The hunter rubbed their palm against their temple. It had been an arduous process, and their thoughts swam once more with the physics on an unseen fringe. Many of the equations had been more akin to an alphabet than any sort of arithmetic, and they had grown annoyed with themself for asking Annalise so many questions— questions that begot more questions, and not all of them relevant.

For any time they had approached to point out something of interest, the queen had leaned in as if to look at the page. But the helm had no evident opening for sight, and the ribbon atop that was yet another barrier.

It was true that many in Yharnam held some strong awareness beyond sight. The hunter had faced many foes with eyes bandaged over and dangerously unerring aim. Even the crow fought flawlessly with an obscuring helm. Still, curiosity compelled them to take furtive glances towards the violet cloth tied across her mask.

And every time, some instinctive awareness caused them to drop their gaze, and their nerves threatened a shiver. They now found it familiar, but always in her presence was the rich iron scent and the sensation of being seen.

For now, the queen’s attention had shifted towards her collected papers. The servant had approached the table and was now retrieving the archive folders. The hunter watched as the they were gathered into gray and gnarled hands. The servant turned and moved stiffly but with a peculiar swiftness as he clambered up a wooden stepladder astride a nearby shelf.

The slumping cloth cap typically hid much of servants’ faces from sight, but the hunter had garnered a clear glimpse here: the servant was quite old. Gray whiskers drooped over his upper lip and frizzled further into his beard. Wrinkles lined his eyes and arced across his brow. What little they had seen of his gaze had been hard and bright; no emotion was clear, but he had stared at the folders with an absolute focus, sparing no attention for the inquisitive hunter.

“I’ll stay,” the hunter said as they stood. “There’s an awful lot to put away. I’ll help.”

Annalise stared at them, or at least it certainly felt like it. The hunter gathered several of the folders into their arms and looked over the indented labels. Most had simply been given numerals; atop many of the bookshelves were corresponding golden marks set into the wood. If it was only a matter of matching the two, the only difficulty would come from navigating the place—

“I said to thee that when next we met that I would tell thee of the king,” Annalise said.

The hunter held the folders close to their chest and looked up. “You did,” they admitted.

“Have thee any interest?” she asked. “Or does it no longer pique thy curiosity?”

“I am interested,” the hunter insisted. “I just… didn’t want to press the matter. Especially if it’s, er, sensitive.” They shrugged and drummed their fingers against the leather. “It’s your tale to tell.”

At that, Annalise leaned back; the hard set of her shoulders eased and she let her hands rest in her lap. “Indeed it is,” she replied. “Sit, then. I have no need for rehearsal. However, I am going to command something of thee.”

The elderly servant had approached again and stood expectantly at the hunter’s side. The hunter shuffled the folders in their arms back into a more orderly stack and gingerly handed them to the man. They were met with a hard and indecipherable stare— Judgment? Appraisal? Something akin to amusement? In any case, the servant gripped at the folders and quickly strode off into the lower depths of the library.

Feeling thoroughly awkward, the hunter sat. “A command?” they asked.

“Consideration keeps thee silent,” Annalise said. “Questions have risen up in thee, but thou hast swallow’d them back like bile for fear of offense.” The chair scuffed against the floor as she stood. “We place great value in thine honesty, and thine honesty is sourced in thy curiosity. Thou’rt given Our permission to be candid. In turn, any reluctance may be seen as a form of _dishonesty_. Understood?”

The hunter nodded.

Annalise was silent, and unsettlingly so; she had taken a few steps towards the hunter but now stood with her hip leaned against the table as if waiting for something.

“The servant seemed rather, er,” the hunter stammered. “Aged.”

“Thou’rt asking _why?_ ” Annalise replied wryly.

“Yes.”

“With the passage of time, one tends to grow older,” she stated. “That servant has seen many a year. Aging occurred. Exceptions to this process are rare indeed.”

The hunter forged ahead. “And retirement?”

“Dost thou think of Us as a tyrant? _We_ force none to remain, but serving the castle is a prospect that many have found irresistible.”

“Why?”

“Guess.”

Was it better to drudge away cleaning a castle than to try and survive the den of horrors that Yharnam had become? Cainhurst was isolated, and enveloped in a dawn; perhaps the prospect was not ‘better’ but instead ‘safer’.

But for it to be _irresistible?_ What else did the position offer?

(Why did so many find _Yharnam_ irresistible? Why had the hunter themself partaken in its customs? Bottles littered the streets, and even the taverns had turned to—)

“Blood,” the hunter answered, and they recalled the sharing of glasses at the banquet. “Yours?”

“Diluted to a distant warmth,” she replied, “and hardly anything more than what can be swilled out from a noble’s emptied chalice, but yes. Mine. Thou’rt now familiar with the taste.”

A memory bloomed: the crow’s wrist, hot and bleeding against the hunter’s lips, and the desire to drown in the heat. The hunter swallowed.

“We have been ensured, time and time again, of the dear crow’s absolute allegiance to the throne,” Annalise said. “Thus, the crow is offered solace in Our blood.” She picked up the letter opener and idly toyed with it; the blade glinted as she passed it from one hand to the other.

Silence settled heavily. The hunter finally dared to speak.

“I would like to seek the same solace here,” they said. “If there is a place for me.”

Annalise approached them. There was an uneasy flutter in the hunter’s stomach and their mouth twinged.

“Then We would seek the same allegiance from thee,” she said. “Thy heart and soul in complete obedience to Us.”

“You’ve offered me every kindness,” the hunter said. “And you’ve been a— a great comfort, in telling me of… of my past, and I would be glad to repay you, to repay you ten times over, to happily claim that I am a servant to the throne—”

Annalise held up a finger and the words died on their tongue.

“No promises,” she said. “No oaths. Only in action shall thy loyalty be proven.”

The hunter stared up at her. “What would you have me do?”

“A task shall present itself to thee in due time.” She leaned in close; the fabric of her dress brushed against their thigh. The hunter shifted in their seat. Annalise gently grasped the hunter’s hand and held it; her other hand still gripped the handle of the small knife. “Still, this earnestness of thine is appreciated. In truth, thou’rt quite dear to Us,” she murmured. “Thou’rt an opportunity most grand.”

Her palm felt so pleasantly warm atop theirs, and the hunter found their gaze settling upon the pale curve of her neck— and the thrum of blood beneath, a pulse they could practically feel, and the urge to plant their mouth upon it and drink.

There was that hunger, and another: a desire for closeness, to give their thanks and their self to her, and to kiss her.

But obscuring her face was the ornate silver barrier, the harsh metal jaw, and the hunter noticed how tightly the helm was fashioned to her neck; the only gap in the interlocking plates was the one that allowed her pale hair to flow down over her shoulder.

“This helm,” the hunter said. “Why do you wear it?”

Annalise sighed. Thankfully, it did not seem borne of disappointment or annoyance; she lightly squeezed the hunter’s palm as she considered her answer.

“For the longest time, We believed there to be no need for a king,” Annalise said. “The last had been the source of the kingdom’s ruin, and my own progenitor had indulged in her own cowardice by taking a consort. In time, however, We found that there was a place for proper counsel.”

“Counsel?” the hunter asked.

“In seeking Our birthright, We found beauty,” she said. “Not the beauty of a sculpted form, or a well-painted face, but a beauty that could only come from terror, and _controlling_ that terror. To be loved and feared in such equal measure that both become the same— this is what the grave of the gods granted Us.”

“But even with such power, with such reverence decorated upon me, I remained no more than myself. I held my rule, but doubt sometimes appeared like a worm in my flesh, gnawing to rot— and to ask any of my kin for guidance was to ask for nothing. They had no advice to offer when I was so absolute. There was simply no way to fathom disobeying my rule.”

Her other hand passed over the hunter’s own. The handle of the knife was pressed into their palm and she guided their fingers to clasp around it.

“In that time, if I were to give thee this blade, and ask thee to cut thine own throat— ” she said, and her fingers encircled the hunter’s wrist and lifted, pulling until the glinting edge was pressed just beneath the hunter’s chin. “Thou wouldst have no choice but to do so. Such was the fate of those that I captivated.”

Annalise lowered her hand to let it rest upon the hunter’s shoulder. The hunter’s hand did not move. The knife remained held close to their skin. They could feel, intuitively, a pressure— one that was uncannily familiar, in the same way the wind made one realize that they were surrounded by air. For surely they had felt her influence everywhere in the castle before— in the liveliness of its subjects, in the brightness of the sky, in the quiet and dreamless sleep that they had enjoyed. Now, they felt her sway focused directly upon them. It was nothing so simple as a seizing of the muscles, as if the hunter was a puppet with strings pulled taut; instead, it was the hunter’s own will in a vise.

If Annalise had asked them to do so, the hunter would see the sense in the request even though there was none, and the blade would eagerly glide across their neck.

The hunter took a deep breath and remained very still. Already the terrible pressure was waning; they held the knife in place by what truly felt like their own volition. They refused to drop it, to let it clatter down to the table out of terror. They instead boldly fixed their stare upon the queen’s helm.

“Did you just free me?” they asked. “Or did you reach the limit that you placed upon yourself?”

“Thou believest that I devised this wretched mask for myself? No,” she said, and the hunter flinched at her scathing tone. “No. What I sought in a king was the strength to withstand reality, the strength to see the world stripped bare of even the illusions that I relied upon. Not a single noble here would dare be weaned from their comforts and even if they had, the truth, the _absolute truth_ of the world is more than enough to drive a man mad.”

Her hand gripped tightly at the hunter’s shoulder, and while the hunter feared her anger, they watched her closely as she wavered— it seemed more now that she was steadying herself against the hunter, her nails digging into their skin to work as anchor while she spoke.

“It was not an easy endeavor. It certainly departed from tradition, or at least the _idea_ of tradition that many here still clung to, but that mattered not to me. As I said, I was quite free to do as I pleased without even the smallest stirrings of criticism from any within my domain. Even so, there was precedent set by my own forebears. Did Calista not break her blood vows with one of her own knights to produce me? So I searched, and eventually I found what I so dearly sought. Is it too much for thee to believe? That I finally found a head befitting of the crown in squalor— in unadorned simplicity? He had nothing to his name except that which he carried.”

“I admit that I made my first advances in disguise— relying as ever upon sculpting perception to my desires— but no matter what face I wore, I was met with the same honesty and care. In the end, I revealed as much of myself as I dared, and begged him take up the crown. And then, with his sight unclouded, I asked of him… to see the truth of _me_ , and to offer allegiance freely given,” she said. The helm tilted down, and the hunter felt her gaze upon them. “He granted me that. It was a thing unspeakably precious to me,” she said quietly. Her grip on the hunter’s shoulder eased. “And once found… it was swiftly lost.”

Sympathy swelled in the hunter’s chest. Slowly, deliberately, they lowered the knife to the table. They placed their hand over hers.

“I have mourned the loss of such truth, and in rare moments I considered seeking it once more,” Annalise said. “To have found such a thing again…” She trailed off, and the hunter felt a chill creeping along the back of their neck from the intensity of her unseen stare. Heat rose in their cheeks; growing raucously at the back of their thoughts was an embarrassed incredulousness.

 _You can_ _’t mean,_ the hunter thought, _you can_ _’t possibly mean—_

Peripheral movement caught their attention. The hunter glanced towards the windows lining the library walls. The pale sky above had gone gray; snow began to fall in lazily drifting flakes.

“The day’s work has been done. We shall retire to Our chambers,” Annalise said, her voice even and calm as if no admissions had just been made. Her hand slipped out from beneath the hunter’s. The hunter, baffled into silence, looked up at her.

“Look not so lost. Thou’rt invited,” she said. “Was it not clear? Must I put it in writing?”

Tension fled them in a short laugh and a shake of the head. The hunter stood; already, Annalise was walking off towards an adjoining hallway.

The hunter followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay, more exposition! but how much of it is true? as always, annalise has fun saying things that fly right over the hunter's head.
> 
> you can also do the little cup water refraction trick yourself if you want, it's an easy physics experiment with lots o' tutorials online.
> 
> as always, thank you so much for reading, and i hope you have enjoyed!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s not really any nsfw in this chapter aside from one (1) Boob Touch. so uh, Boob Touch Beware

The castle twisted in upon itself in long convolutions, weaving from interior to exterior through decorated halls and bridges of stone. Annalise led the hunter along the labyrinthine path to her chambers; or, at the very least, the hunter was able to keep up with her pace. More of the castle’s glories passed by in a blur: courts of proud statues, walls with more paintings visible than wood, and the hunter almost stumbled when their boots trod over what must have been the well-brushed fur of a skinned beast.

In time they reached a room that seemed to be a precursor to the proper royal bedchamber; there was so much to catch the eye that the hunter struggled to focus on any one part of it. There were the statues, of course, the inescapable stone audience that stood in most every part of the castle. Dotted between them were tall and spindly metal candelabras left mostly unlit. Thickly brocaded fabric hung from the walls to soften the stone walls of the room. There was a gold-gilded vanity with a tall silver mirror, and adjacent to that was a narrow but plushly cushioned chaise strewn with tasseled pillows.

Shoved into a corner was a writing desk; it was plain only in contrast to the room. The wood was well-polished but unadorned. It must have been moved here from the library, the hunter figured. The surface was covered in neatly ordered documents; the hunter recognized a few that they themself had helped sort out from the chaff.

Above the desk was something that made the hunter stare: it was a skull, mounted as one would any other hunting trophy earned far from the terror of a Yharnam night. This was certainly a specimen worth keeping. One could see the perfect balance between the rounded slope of a human cranium, the elongated sharpness of a beast’s snout, and from the crown sprouted the familiar twisting horns of the Healing Church’s most devout.

“An old gift from our crow,” Annalise said, and she pulled one candle from its holder to light its fellows and brighten the room. “’Tis always a pleasure to see the true face of the Church scoured bare of their pretending.”

The hunter recalled the vicar in the cathedral and the eruptive abruptness of her transformation; this cleric must have been struck down with incredibly precise timing. Humanity was still clearly evident in the skull’s shape, and the antlers were nascent compared to the tangled, massive growths the hunter had seen before. The hunter kept their gaze upon it as they sat down on the chaise.

Oh, but the seat was so _comfortable_. Their attention turned to just how far they were able to sink into the cushion. They ran their hand over the luxuriant velvet softness of the nearest draped-over blanket. Before they could think to resist it, the urge to yawn gripped them.

Annalise paused. Her hand stilled, holding one candle to the wick of another, and her head turned towards the hunter. “Thou’rt tired.”

The hunter pursed their lips. “I— perhaps. I am not sure. Nothing but night, nothing but day—the body loses track of the time.”

She completed lighting the candle and then turned to face them. “Our most ancient of forebears lived without the guidance of dawn and dusk. Deep within the earth, other habits sufficed to measure out the passage of time. They are rituals that We have replicated here.”

“The banquets?” the hunter asked. “I suppose it’s easy to sleep after such a meal.”

“Indeed, and it will soon be time for another. Some preparations must be made.” She sighed. “Indulgence and familiarity. In this We thrive.”

“Do you tire of it?” the hunter asked.

Annalise went on in silence; a candle was lit, then another, then another; finally, the first was returned to its place and the collection of little flames burned steadily.

“Thou’rt asking if We truly take part in the same joys Our people do,” Annalise said.

“You know the truth of the night and they don’t,” the hunter said carefully. “It’s heavy knowledge to bear alone.”

“And alone We are,” she said, her voice flat, and she lowered herself onto the gilded seat in front of the mirror with her back towards them, “lest companionship prove itself afore Us.”

Annalise sat at the vanity, her back straight, her shoulders stiff. The silence was densely expectant.

The hunter rose from the chaise and approached, step by tentative step. They wondered if there were usually ladies-in-waiting to attend to the queen; here, though, the task had been entrusted to them. Perhaps the queen did typically tend to herself, they thought. She had gone to light the candles when she had entered the room, and such a simple task could have been given to a servant.

Or, they realized, the candles had been lit entirely for their benefit; whatever senses the queen held behind the helm likely did not need the light.

They stood behind her seat. Annalise remained silent. The hunter took quick inventory of their surroundings. The vanity did not seem to be oft-used; the various containers of powders and creams were all beautiful but untouched and arranged in careful, tight rows. The only thing out of place was a silver comb. The hunter picked it up and ran the thin tines across their thumb before gathering Annalise’s hair in the loose curve of their palm. 

Delicately, they took the comb and swept it through her hair. They began near the bottom, easing the tines through and smoothing out any tangles as they went. It was easy work; Annalise’s hair was soft against the hunter’s hand, flowing pleasantly as the comb pulled past. They began the next brush higher, near the nape of her neck. Their knuckles grazed her skin as they brought the comb down to her shoulder blades.

She tilted her head slightly forward; the hunter drew closer and pressed the comb to the lower jut of her helm. They brought their hand down and the comb traveled in one long, silken movement. They repeated the motion and their gaze flitted from the queen to her reflection in search of anything unspoken. Had her posture eased? Her shoulders appeared less tense, her hands less stiffly held upon her lap. They pulled the comb along again and again, hoping for some further tell of her enjoyment.

With the next stroke of the comb, Annalise tilted her head, stretching her neck along the path the hunter’s hand took. There was a sound, incredibly faint, that may have been a satisfied sigh.

Enthused, the hunter continued. The comb smoothly pulled through several more times. The hunter idly wondered who was enjoying themselves more— Annalise, in having such attention lavished upon her after a long lacking, or the hunter, who had gone dizzy with the opportunity to dote. They would gladly stay, they realized as they had several times already. They would call Cainhurst home, and here they would care and be cared for, and on some true sunrise they hoped that they would play this part again— pulling the comb through her hair before the banquet, offering steady comfort and the knowledge that the night had ended.

(But the night hadn’t ended, not yet, and for how long could one smooth back the fur of a raised and bristling hackle? What instincts had hounded them about the queen’s own hunger for insight, and did they trust her enough to ignore them? Did the hunter feel safe here, or merely _comfortable_?)

Eventually, the hunter gathered her hair and pushed it back over her shoulder in the style they were familiar with. It flowed over the curve of her collarbone and draped further over her chest. The hunter ran their fingers through a few lingering strands, their touch dragging over her bare shoulder. They could sense the warmth of her skin, see the subtle swell of inhale as she breathed. Their hand settled on her shoulder. Her helm inclined back, coming to rest lightly against their chest.

It may not be wise to linger so, the hunter thought as their fingers drifted one last time through her hair. With hope and fear set safely aside, the facts remained. She was the queen; they were a guest with nothing to their name, and even then, it was a name that she had rediscovered for them.

 _To have found such a thing again_ …

Besides, there was the draw of her blood, pulsing thickly through her every vein. The awareness of it had been burgeoning at the back of their thoughts, welling up in the memory of iron on their tongue. Biting at the crow’s wrist was one thing; to press their mouth to the pale neck beneath them was another.

_Lest companionship prove itself afore Us…_

Their stance shifted as they considered drawing back; in response, Annalise gripped at their wrist and the helm turned to face them. “Thou offer’d thyself and now withdraw,” she said. “Thy heart must lieth elsewhere. Doth it beat only for blood?”

“No,” the hunter said. “I merely fear…I fear…” They trailed off, unsure, as her hand held tightly to their own.

The helm tilted minutely. “Of reputation, worry not. No further tarnish could possibly find purchase on mine.”

The hunter made no move to pull away, but they chewed at the interior of their cheek and frowned thoughtfully. Annalise’s thumb rubbed reassuringly against their wrist, but there was the force of her unseen gaze freezing them. There was no way to put their warring instincts to words under the pressure of her perception.

Slowly, the helm turned away, and Annalise faced the mirror. “What is thy want?” she asked.

“You,” the hunter answered in a murmur.

“Then what doubts are held?”

The hunter remained silent.

“We will not order anything of thee,” she said quietly, “unless thou maketh that request of Us.”

They took a deep breath and kept still. Annalise’s helm remained rigidly turned towards the mirror; the hunter ventured a look at themself. There was a long-held exhaustion evident in their eyes, and for all the comfort the castle had offered, they still had the look of something both cornered and hungry.

“I fear hurting you,” the hunter finally admitted.

There was a laugh, not mocking, but hollow enough that the hunter wished they had hesitated yet longer. There was a pull at their wrist; their hand was guided lower, down from her shoulder, over the ruched neckline hem of her dress— the hunter inhaled sharply as their palm was pressed to her breast.

“Thy fear is unfounded,” Annalise said, her tone honed to a strange sarcasm. “And if thou’rt to be Ours, then be _Ours_ —”

Her breath hitched in a sudden rising jolt. The hunter pushed their mouth against her neck, their worry washed away in their desire for closeness— and heat bade hunger to wait. They kissed her, again and again, venturing as high as they could with the obstruction of her helm. Her head arched back and the span of her neck was granted to them. The hunter pressed their lips to her throat, to the path of her carotid, to the delicate hollow center of her collarbone— searching for sensitivity, for any prized reaction from the queen. They delighted in the sound of her breath, muffled but heightening, and the way she shifted beneath them to bequeath more of herself. The hunter, directed by her movement, brushed their lips against the soft slope of her chest.

“Ours,” Annalise repeated breathily. “Thou’rt ours.”

* * *

Snow cast a cold pallor over stone. Wind wailed over restless water. And in the city, the pale moonlight had found that it had no shadow left to cast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for reading/commenting/etc! ❤️


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ❗ ❗ this chapter is NSFW. same drill as last time. nothing too terribly plot relevant here aside from reinforcing some themes; if you're just here for Plot, it's relatively safe to skip.

❗ ❗ for those opting into the NSFW: some very mild dom/sub, fingers in mouth, mouth on pussy, mutual masturbation. all in a day's work at castle cainhurst

* * *

The hunter dipped their head low and pressed their lips to Annalise’s shoulder, to the hard curve of her collarbone, to her chest— and with a deep, sharp inhale she rose up to meet them. They kissed at the soft swell of her breast and her hand, still clasped over the hunter’s own, tightened. Their fingers were pushed against her and as they shifted their grip, their thumb brushed over her nipple. They swept their hand back, dragging their touch over her until the peak was evident through the thin fabric of her gown.

The hunter wished to pull the dress from her shoulders, to bare her skin and lavish every inch of it, but the hand gripping theirs prompted a craving for instruction. Where would she guide them next? Would she place their hands upon the hem and direct them to undress her? Would she allow them to continue their kisses unhindered, to plant their mouth upon her breast— and the hunter felt a flare of heat as they were pressed to the same, her hand guiding theirs beneath the heavy curve to hold her. A soft sound escaped them and their free hand slid up her side, gliding a touch from her midriff to her ribs— they shifted, unsteady where they stood, arched awkwardly over her due to the vanity’s gilded chair.

With great reluctance, they pulled their touch away from her chest and instead knelt at her side. They brought Annalise’s hand to their lips; their mouth brushed over her knuckles. “If I am to be but a tool in a greater hand,” they said with a half-smile, recalling the dim back rooms of the dueling plaza, “then I think I would be grateful for the hand to be yours.”

She laughed in a low, quiet huff, the sound of it muffled from behind the helm. The hunter grinned and pressed a kiss to her fingers, intertwined as they were with their own; with a gentle twist they exposed her palm and planted another there. They lowered their mouth reverently to the translucent skin of her wrist, the blue of each tributary vein vivid beneath— 

Their stomach lurched with nauseous yearning and the hunter faltered with their mouth slack just above her skin. They had stoked the building heat inside them with her touch, but that had also fueled their hunger. There was a void carved through their veins, aching for an influx of blood to flood them, a need usually satisfied by the injector slammed carelessly to their thigh. But here, the sweet rotting iron was pooled just beneath their mouth. The hunter swallowed back saliva. They felt the belly-hook pull of a precipitous edge and the answering instinctive urge to back away.

There was the sense that to part her wrist with their teeth would be akin to diving into deep water while lashed to a stone.

Annalise pushed her wrist against the hunter’s incisors. The hunter flinched involuntarily but didn’t dare to move further.

“What is this hesitation?” she asked.

Slowly, the hunter lifted their head away from her wrist. “I said I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Are We so delicate? Thou took’st thy fill of the crow.”

“That was a bit of revenge,” the hunter admitted. “I’d been gutted.”

“And if I were to instruct thee?” she asked, and the helm tilted inquisitively. “Tool of Our hand, drink of Our blood. What then?”

The hunter started as if to speak, but then they halted in hesitation.

Annalise’s helm tilted further as she considered them. Her hand lifted, but instead of offering up her wrist, she let two fingers rest upon the hunter’s bottom lip. “Thy resistance is good,” she stated. “And necessary. If thou hadst first drank of Us so thoughtlessly, without Our instruction, I would have cast thee out, and made grim example of thy greed.” The tip of her finger pushed against the hunter’s lip, dragging it down to reveal their teeth. “However, thou wouldst do well to remember: We instructed thee that any reluctance to speak is to be considered a dishonesty. Thy silence may have its price.”

The hunter stiffened, unsure of where the queen’s shifting mood was taking them, and though the abyssal pull of her wrist was no longer pressed to their lips they still felt as if they were sliding down something steep. “Ann— your majesty, my silence conceals nothing but a— a need for time to sort through my thoughts, to—”

Their words became an incoherent mumble; Annalise had slipped two fingers into their mouth. One dragged over the ridges of their molars while the other came to rest atop their tongue.

“Thou know’st precisely why thou’rt not drowning in Us now,” she said. “Thou doth not wish to harm Us, this is true. But there lies more doubt in thy mind beyond that. Thou hadst said the same before. Say it again.”

The hunter, wide-eyed and lost in mounting confusion, stared at her.

“Thou’rt afraid,” she stated. “Say it.”

For a few moments, the most the hunter could manage was to breathe. The weight of her attention was oppressive. But eventually they rallied; blooming warm inside them was still the desire for her instruction.

“ ‘m afraid,” they managed to murmur around the fingers hilted in their mouth, and it was true.

Her thumb tapped against their cheek. “And yet, thy want is to still be Ours.”

The hunter nodded, and then, for good measure, mumbled. “ ‘es.”

Her other hand rose and swept over their hair, her touch traveling lightly down to the nape of their neck; the hunter shivered and shut their eyes.

“Then thou’rt in Our stewardship,” she said. “Know that in Our care, We will not throw thee carelessly to the depths of indulgence. Thy satiation shall be given in deserved doses.” She sighed, sounding satisfied. Her hand traveled again from the hunter’s brow to their shoulder; they leaned into her touch. “For thee to be made truly Ours— such a terrible leash We will bind thee with,” she said, and some sharp smile was evident in her words. “And every inch of it thou shalt ask for, and earn.”

Annalise stood. Her fingers were still inside the hunter’s mouth, hooked in against their cheek; they scrambled to their feet as she pulled them up with her. They knew they must have looked ridiculous, wincing as they rose, swallowing back drool, but from their gut came a surge of disorienting heat. They stood before her with their mouth held slack, careful not to press their teeth against her.

Annalise gave a short, breathy laugh before pushing at their jaw and steering them to the edge of the vanity. Her fingers slipped from their mouth and instead dropped to press at the inner seam of their trousers, a direct touch that made them jolt and dig their hip into the wood behind them. Her palm curved along them with delicious pressure; their breath hitched with a helpless buck they made against her.

“Thou’rt truly amenable,” she said as she cupped her hand over them. “Ah, the things I may bid thee do.”

The hunter splayed their legs open as they leaned back against the vanity, eager for her touch, but the drive to reciprocate brought their hands to her hips. They gripped the cloth of Annalise’s dress, bunching it in their hold. “Your majesty,” they said. “If you would let me, I would offer my mouth further to you— to drink of you in another way—”

“Thou makest grand offers so readily,” she replied. “I take little heed of pillow promises. But in this instance, thou mayst prove thyself.”

She drew back, and the lack of her hand between their legs made the hunter sigh. They steadied themself against the vanity as she took languid steps away. Annalise bent over the chaise and brushed her hand over the elaborately patterned fabric. Slowly, she lowered herself to sit upon it, and as she leaned back the cloth of her dress draped low between her spread legs.

“Kneel,” she said, and the depth of her tone made color rise in the hunter’s cheeks. They approached and dropped to their knees before her. They gathered the bottom of her dress in their hands and slid it upwards. Their touch dragged over the arch of her foot, the pale length of her shin, and the hunter slowed appreciatively as they pulled the fabric above her thighs. They could feel the unnatural heat of her blood emanating off of her, and the chill of the castle seemed not to affect her at all; the fine hairs on her legs did not prickle in the cold.

The hunter gathered the last stretch of her gown and tucked it behind her hips. She now sat plain before them, without undergarments; the hunter was tempted to simply sit and stare.

But they quickly urged themself into motion: the hunter kissed their way along her inner thigh, relishing the soft warmth against their cheek. As they neared the center, they paused and looked up. Annalise’s posture was relaxed, expectant; most of her weight was tilted against one elbow as she lounged. The hunter noted with delight that her breath had quickened, evident in the deeper rise and fall of her chest. The silver helm faced them, and the hunter felt the weight of her watching.

The hunter’s nose brushed against pale, wiry hair. They placed their mouth over her clitoral hood and lightly sucked before lapping their tongue up against her. They maintained slow, easygoing circles as their eyes drifted shut. Their senses were flooded in her: from the soft press of her thigh against their cheek; to the twinge of salt, slight against their tongue; to the quiet sounds of her breathing, and the nearly imperceptible falter in her exhale as the hunter tightened their motions.

They angled their head lower and were rewarded with slickness fresh against their chin. Mirrored heat bloomed between the hunter’s legs as they pressed their mouth against her. Despite their own unattended eagerness, they kept their pace slow, not to tease but instead to acclimate; as they focused their attention on her clit once more, they swept their hand in from her thigh and dragged a fingertip against her, preparing to slip it inside. Before doing so, they pulled back and looked up at Annalise with obedient inquisitiveness.

“No,” she stated. “Keep with the same.”

They placed their hand back upon her thigh and lightly squeezed. With their mouth, they redoubled their efforts; they felt muscle twitch under their palm and she made a sound that they immediately wanted to hear again. They ran their tongue flat against her, the sensation heated, velvet-soft, and wet— and a leg knocked unceremoniously against their head seemed a victory as they pressed against swollen sensitivity. Their attention had sent a severe jolt through her. As the hunter risked a glance upwards, they saw the tension held in her chest, in the way her hand clutched the fabric of the chaise. Nails scraped the hunter’s scalp. Her other hand held them tightly, but there was no further tug to pull them closer against her, nor a shove to make them shy away.

A sign, then, to continue as they were. The hunter drifted into an attentive daze, their thoughts lost to steady heat and the hand wound in their hair. They knew that the same heat must have been coiling ever tighter in Annalise, though it seemed as if she was resisting it, wresting the crescendo out long. At times, she did force their head back, bidding them to ease their efforts. And each time, all the hunter longed for was to press their face right back up against her. They were desperate to deliver her over the edge.

Once more, she pulled their head away, though this time she wrenched them further, forcing them to crane their neck. Their throat bobbed as they swallowed and they peered up at her with a wary curiosity.

“Thou’rt quite eager to please,” Annalise said after her breathing steadied. “But the sight of Us undone is not something thou hast yet earned.”

The way their face fell must have been evident to her. The grip on their hair loosened. She leaned forward and cupped their dampened cheek.

“Another time,” she murmured. “Such sights shall be granted to thee then. Thou wouldst return to Our chambers for such a reward, wouldst thou not?”

They nodded enthusiastically.

“Good.” She leaned back; her hand slipped away from the hunter’s face and came to rest lightly between her legs. “Remain where thou art, but turn thy gaze towards the door.”

The hunter shifted around on their knees until their back was to her. From their position on the floor, they could catch a small sliver glimpse of her in the vanity mirror, but it was no more than her helm. Still, they averted their eyes and sat with careful patience.

They heard movement behind them, the light sound of fabric against fabric, and something else, rhythmic— their hands went tight on their thighs.

“Thy work is not to be thankless,” Annalise stated. “Disrobe.”

The hunter hooked their thumbs against the waist of their trousers, tugging them down before they had the sense to properly unbutton them. They fumbled at the clasp before shoving them past their thighs, under their knees—

“Enough,” Annalise said.

They paused, their pants a tangle around their shins.

“Finish by thine own hand,” she added, “if it would please thee.”

The hunter knelt, their legs spread as wide as their remnant trousers would allow them. Annalise’s gaze made the back of their neck prickle. The sensation slid into their spine, deepening into an electric thrum— and their hand dipped between their thighs in familiar, practiced motions. They bit their lip to restrain a sigh that escaped them anyway, a huffed-out exhortation as they quickened their pace.

“Speak thy mind,” Annalise instructed, and the subtle hunger in her tone made the hunter shiver. “That is, if there are any imaginings of thine to share.”

“I—” The hunter swallowed, their voice having left them at a pitch higher than expected. “I’d like very much to finish what I started.”

She made a low, short hum; the hunter took it as a sign to continue. “A great honor, it is—to kiss you, to make use of my mouth for you, to make you come—”

“And for thyself?” she interrupted.

“To rest my head against your chest would nearly be enough,” they answered with a half-laugh. “But to come undone by your hand— I’d be glad to earn that, too.”

There was a pause, and the sound of Annalise shifting, perhaps to a more comfortable position upon the chaise. “A high prize, indeed,” she said. “Until thy worth is fully proven, I may have to delegate the task.”

Their pace faltered; the hunter resisted the urge to turn and look at her. “Delegate?”

“The crow could have thee again,” she said nonchalantly. “’Twould be a sight worth seeing.”

The hunter’s shoulders briefly shuddered. “That— that would—”

“Thou wouldst find enjoyment in that? In being fucked before Us?”

“Yes,” they confessed easily. “I would. I would do anything for you.”

“Such use We shall make of thee, then,” she said, and the hunter basked in how pleased she sounded. “Thou shalt prove thyself, and We shall claim thee as Ours, again and again, until naught else is known to thee.”

The hunter curled in upon themself, their movement now rapid, almost frantic. Their eyes fell shut and welled with some sweet emotion; they really were to stay here, and be held close, and find their worth within the sovereign’s will—

They gasped and their hips rolled against nothing. A white heat passed through them before settling into something warm and heavy in their limbs. They pressed their palm against the rug as they caught their breath. Their pulse pounded in their ears; they were deeply curious as to if Annalise had reached the same crux or if she was still at work behind them. Time slid by as they recovered. After a short while, Annalise spoke up.

“Come here.”

The hunter twisted around to look at her; she had laid herself out on the length of the chaise. Her dress had been pushed back down to its proper length. The height of the chaise was as such that if she laid on her side, the hunter could lean their head against her from their seat on the floor; she gently placed her hand on their hair and guided them to rest upon her chest.

“The banquet approaches,” Annalise said, “and there are preparations to attend to.” She made no move to rise, however.

“Of course,” the hunter murmured, and they stifled a smile.

“One minute,” she said flatly, “and no longer afore I cast thee out.”

“Shall I count the seconds, your majesty?”

She tsked. “No.”

With a grin, the hunter relaxed against her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed! <3 all comments and such are always deeply appreciated.


End file.
